


And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeats

by HellNHighHeels, RegalPotato



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Katie and I had an angst baby and this is it, Kinda, Mirror Universe, not graphic imo but definitely some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-05-13 07:51:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14744852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HellNHighHeels/pseuds/HellNHighHeels, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalPotato/pseuds/RegalPotato
Summary: River shakes her head, confusion and disbelief creasing her brow. "You can't be serious. This has to be a trick. You and I, we'd never..." her voice trails off, dejected by the deeds they'd witnessed only a moment ago."Infinite universes, River," he shrugs, as if he's not speaking his greatest fear aloud. "We were bound to tread a dark path in one of them."





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RegalPotato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalPotato/gifts).



> So Katie and I have been scheming and crying over this in secret for like a month now. She's every bit as much to blame for this as I am. 
> 
> She even made this amazing [fanart ](http://regalpotato.tumblr.com/post/174210277638/what-should-we-do-with-him-the-woman-purrs-in-a)

 “Because no one has more thirst for earth, for blood, and for ferocious sexuality than the creatures who inhabit cold mirrors”

― Alejandra Pizarnik

* * *

  

There’s blood in his mouth, acrid and sharp. The planet around him is going up in flames and all he can do is fall to his knees, chest heaving. 

 

“What should we do with him?” the woman purrs in a voice as soft as velvet. She looks like River, the same wild hair and intoxicating eyes. She moves like River too, her lightly-muscled arms draped over the shoulders of a man he’s only ever seen in the mirror. Her fingers swirl over the other man's chest, so soft and delicate it’s hard to believe he'd witnessed those same hands slit a man's throat. 

 

The man that wears his face sucks in a deep, contemplative breath. When he exhales, it sounds more like a growl than it does a sigh, a low rumble in his chest as his fingertips toy with the business end of a blade. “I say kill him now ,” he offers easily. “But I know how much you enjoy foreplay, dear.”

 

He flips the knife in his hands, offering the hilt to the woman wrapped around his shoulders. Her lips stretch in a way that’s more snarl than smile as she takes the weapon from his grasp. “Well you’re on your knees,” she purrs, batting innocent lashes at her accomplice. “How’s a girl to resist?”

 

Predatory eyes turn on him and in that moment, she’s nothing like the River he knows. She’s all the deadly skill with none of the desire for restraint. Her battle dress may cling in all the same places, but her hips don’t sway in quite the same way. She moves like a lioness, like a hunter or a plague coming to tear one's world apart. Which, in a way, he supposes she is. 

 

“Please,” he begs, but not for his life. “You can’t stay here. Causality can’t sustain the pressure.”

 

She comes to a stop before him but she doesn’t kneel, doesn’t lower herself to his level. Instead, she stares down at him like she is a wicked goddess and he a humble sinner at her alter. She cups his chin and her nails dig into his skin in a way that’s far from a lover’s embrace. 

 

“Oh, honey,” she sighs, cruel and condescending, an unhinged gleam in her eyes, “we know.”

 

She cares not for his pleading words, empathy just a burden she no longer entertains. The Doctor's eyes drop to the weapon in her hand, to the hilt clasped lazily between her fingers, gaze stuttering over familiar carvings he can't quite place. There isn't time for his thoughts to linger on why, because the woman before him twists her head to the side, contemplating where she'll slice him first as her grip tightens on the knife. The Doctor inhales, eyes closing. A loud bang echoes across the desolated ground, and his eyes fly wide once again, sparks erupting before him. The woman in front of him let’s out a scream that’s more frustration than frenzy, and he may be a bit thick at times, but even he can spot a signal when he sees one.  

 

The Doctor leaps away, or tries to at least, staggering to a standstill when a pair of deceptively strong hands find his shoulders and tear him to his feet. It’s fruitless to struggle, but he tries anyway. At least he attempts to, until cool metal finds his throat, biting against his skin. He stills then, breathing hard, all too aware of the soft curves pressing into him from behind. They’re familiar, deadly, and now that he’s this close, it’s infinitely easier to tell that she’s not his River. She reeks of smoke and copper, his River’s sweetness replaced by something foul and dark.  

 

His hair dangles over his eyes, but as his vision clears and the dust settles, he spots a sight that eases the tension in his chest. River, the real River, his River, stands a few paces away, his doppelganger pulled to her chest much the same way he is to his wife’s imposter. It's rather striking, the similarities between the two women, the only discernible difference between them being their weapon of choice.  His wife has trained a gun to her hostage's temple while the lookalike has chosen to press a distressingly sharp blade into the Doctor's throat.

 

“Took you long enough,” the Doctor huffs out, voice light despite the cinders at their feet. 

 

“Well if someone could follow a plan,” his River snaps, the grip on her hostage deadly, “it wouldn’t be a problem.”

 

“They set a trap for us.” The imposter wearing his face grins, rubbing his hands together, manic excitement dancing behind dark eyes. “That’s new.”

 

“I do love a challenge.” The woman holding him prisoner lets out a laugh, deep and sultry and dangerous, the vibrations burning against the Doctor’s back.

 

“You know what they say,” the other him continues. “Three's a crowd, but four's a party. What do you say to that, River?” He twists his head into the barrel of her gun, trying to steal a glance at his captor. “Fancy a little fun?”

 

“In your dreams," River scoffs, but the imposter merely snickers.

 

“I wasn’t talking to you,” he taunts, eyes traveling back towards the woman that had been lovingly draped across his shoulders only a moment ago. His sharp stare may as well be a physical touch, because the Doctor feels the other man's gaze cut straight through him. There's a desperation to it, as if he'd drill a hole right through his own chest just to get to her. 

 

The Doctor feels how the woman behind him has gone rigid, every muscle spring-loaded and tight, infected by the giddy and gruesome expression marring his replica's sharp features. “I suppose it could be fun,” she bites out. “I’ve never murdered myself before.” 

 

“I’d like to see you try,” the real River snarls, and the Doctor's eyes find hers with the same desperate intensity his counterpart had bestowed upon the corrupted River. 

 

His wife’s determined green eyes are all the distraction he has from the excitement and rage making his captor bristle. A current ripples across the false River's skin, like lightning that can’t be contained, making her grip tighten around his throat. He feels the blade press into his skin, a sharp sting and the faintest hint of blood blooming on his neck. 

 

His River sees it too, retaliating by cracking the butt of her gun into his counterparts temple. The woman restraining him hisses, a shiver of delight rattling her chest, and it sounds so familiar, her breath against his ear. He can't help but think of all the times he's heard that noise before, when River gasped beneath him as his hands skimmed up her ribs and his teeth sunk into the pulse point on her neck. He recalls how she writhed beneath him as pleasurepain shot through her body.

 

He wonders if that's what this River feels now, if violence elicits the same effect as a soft touch, if seeing him bleed makes her shiver the way a gentle kiss should. He can almost smell it on her, the love of chaos, the thrill of destruction.  Her touch burns him like a Gallifreyan summer, like a violent past and people better off forgotten. 

 

The injury blossoms on his other self, dark crimson dripping along the corner of his brow. The man lifts a slow hand, uncaring of the weapon aimed at his temple, to wipe at the blood staining his sharp features. The sight of red on his fingers makes him grin, a wicked curl on his cheeks as his tongue darts out to taste it. 

 

“You know what I did with the last person who drew my blood?” There’s a delighted shiver on his spine, his voice a storm cloud, threats rumbling like distant thunder. He doesn’t wait for River to indulge him, to ask; his voice deepens, demanding she listen. “I turned them inside out and locked them in a time loop.”

 

“How romantic of you,” the real River quips, sarcasm dripping like the red on his brow. 

 

“Oh, it was,” the other River purrs. “And as exciting as this is, I’d like to have my husband back now. Dinner plans, you see.”

 

Nostalgia creeps in and the Doctor fights the urge to laugh in such dire circumstances. Reality is cracking and she wants dinner; some things never change. “River,” he tries, and his efforts feel all too familiar. “You have to stop this. You’re killing the univ-“

 

“Hush, honey,” she silences him, rasping the endearment, letting it slide across his ear like the syllables are made of silk and venom, “this is between us girls.”

 

“What are you proposing?” his River asks, tone low and skeptical.

 

“A trade,” she answers easily. “One idiot for another.” 

 

“You think I’m just going to let him go?” River scoffs, raising an indignant brow. “Over my dead body.” 

 

“It’ll be over his if you’re not careful," the other woman snarls back, her grip on his throat tightening in warning.

 

“If you want him back,” the Doctor intervenes, daring to speak despite the blade pressing into his Adam’s apple, “you have to let me go first. Otherwise, she’ll never trust you.”

 

“Yes,” the woman behind him hums in agreement. “I’m stubborn like that.” 

 

The grip on his shoulder loosens, and his brows raise, pleasantly surprised. He loves it when hopeful jabbering gets him out of impossible situations. The Doctor's about to take the liberty of movement when she gives a jarring tug, her front colliding with his back once more.

 

“Try anything stupid," she whispers, her lips grazing the shell of his ear, "and I’ll gut her whilst you watch. Are we clear?”

 

She means it, and if the cold steel at his throat hadn't been convincing enough, the cadence of her voice would be. He knows River well enough to read between the lines of her threats. This one is far from empty, and a sliver of ice creeps along his spine. He swallows back the rush of fear and adrenaline, voice low and controlled as he complies. “Understood.” 

 

"Good." Her voice is husky and raw and in another life that tone had been a life line and an omen and a blessing. It's equally as terrifying now as it had been years ago, but he pushes that to the back of his mind where it can return to haunt him another day. The woman behind him finally relinquishes her hold and the Doctor takes a cautious step forward, eyes locked on the River ahead of him, palms forward in surrender. 

 

He’s halfway across the small expanse before his River sees fit to release her hostage, shoving him away. The lanky doppelganger turns to face her, twisting his own neck at an unnatural angle, a pout on his lips as he asks, “No kiss?”

 

River puts her gun to his mouth instead, sneering as she instructs, “Walk.”

 

“Maybe next time,” he says with a smirk, sauntering away. 

 

He hates himself for it, but the Doctor's eyes drift from his River to the man stalking towards him. He's never been the vainest of individuals, couldn’t be with the goofy, gangly avatars he's been dealt in the past. But the man before him is a new breed entirely. He's thinner, cheeks sharper and more gaunt. His skin is more pale, ghostly, haunted and drained by a lifetime of misdeeds. His lithe body is twitchy and manic and impulsive, as if he's never met a consequence that scared him. He's a murky reflection of every dark thought this body has ever had, and it shows in how his lips curl, barring the faintest glimpse of teeth. 

 

He can't help but wonder what the other man sees in him. An echo perhaps, control mistaken for repression, hope mistaken for weakness.  Hazel eyes he’s only ever seen in the mirror bore into him, and as he stares back, he can't shake the feeling that he's looking into the untempered schism itself. 

 

The space between them closes with every step. It isn't the same tingle he gets when testing the limits of time. It doesn't feel like the looming threat of paradox when meeting his younger selves. This burns like skin left too close to a fire for too long. It screeches in his ears like static. The atoms of his being run rampant and wild as they attempt to flee from a magnet of the same polarity. It's stings in a way he's never felt before, because it isn't time that's being bent or broken; it's causality, the very fabric of existence cracking under the pressure of two copies of the exact same man.

 

They're about to pass, just ships in the night returning home, when the other man slows, inclining his chin like he means to impart a secret. “We’ll burn this world to the ground," he promises, "just like all the rest, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us."

 

“It’s not me you need to worry about. It’s her." The Doctor's eyes drift to the River waiting for him only a few meters away, and the man beside him huffs out a hollow laugh. 

 

“Was I ever so naive?” he hisses, leaning in closer. “River is how we got this way.” 

 

The eyes before him are a dark reflection of every bad day condensed into two swirling pools of hazel, and the Doctor swallows back his surprise, faith and denial turning his face to stone. “Yours, maybe. Not mine.”

 

A chuckle stirs deep in the other man's throat, a smirk scarring his features in a way the Doctor never thought possible.  "Ask her sometime," the imposter whispers, inching ever closer to rasp against the Doctor's ear, "what she'd do to mummy dearest if ever she had the chance.” 

 

He pulls back, brows raised in a challenge so enticing the Doctor has to tame his own tongue to keep from inquiring further. His other self must sense it in him, the reckless curiosity, the need to know. Maybe that's why the other man backs away first. Maybe he puts distance between them, not to spare him, but to delight in the way Doctor's hearts twist with the temptation of foreknowledge. 

 

His forlorn counterpart turns his back on them then, heedless of the gun still trained on his back. He's fearless and careless as he skips across the small space and back into the other River's waiting arms. They fold around one another like two galaxies colliding. It's violent and captivating, and the Doctor can't help the way his eyes follow the path of his other self's hands. They're desperate and frenzied, clawing at this other River as if she holds the key to breathing. His mouth chases her like she keeps oxygen locked behind her lips. Her movements are just as rough, and yet where he is reckless abandon, she is utterly in control, painfully so. Practiced hands have folded around his neck, the knife clasped lazily between her fingers, and when she sinks her teeth into his bottom lip, the Doctor hears his other self moan like a man pardoned from sin.  

 

It's wanton and guttural and just a little bit broken. He sees now, why Amy always tells them to get a room. The Doctor is so enraptured by it, he jumps slightly when River comes to stand by his side. It's only then he realizes he'd been frozen in place, hypnotized by whatever dark magic permeates off their other selves. He blinks away the spell, seeking out his wife's face. She looks nauseous and repulsed and wary, her eyes sharp and lips pressed into a thin line. The Doctor’s hand finds the small of his wife’s back, a comfort, a question, and River's eyes break from the spectacle, finding his. Her expression shifts in a moment, features softening, her soft smile like fresh air to choking lungs. 

 

"Let's go, sweetie," she tells him, offering him her wrist. The Doctor's fingers wrap around the leather strap of her vortex manipulator, and River’s about to join him with her other hand, about to take them away with a tap of her clever fingers when-

 

“Leaving so soon?” a velvet voice chimes, and the Doctor glances up to see the duplicate of his wife grinning. 

 

“Wouldn’t want to interrupt your dinner plans,” he quips back. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the scolding look his River shoots him. He shouldn’t be engaging with the enemy, he knows, but it’s rather difficult when his brain and body are wired to respond to her, even when she is the enemy in question.  

 

The other him seems equally as defenseless to her charms, mouthing at her throat like her pulse is something he can taste, a treasure he could keep if only he could crawl beneath her bones. His lookalike’s hands cling to her hips, hauling her ever closer. Her arms are still folded around his other self’s neck; and yet, those eyes, that are too dark and too heavy to belong to his River, are focused only on him. 

 

It makes the Doctor’s throat go dry, fear and another instinct he refuses to name sparking like lightning in his veins. She’s still looking at him, still holding him captive with her eyes when she leans up to whisper something in the other man’s ear. Her red lips move like they invented sin itself, secret syllables rolling off her tongue as she licks at the shell of her lover’s ear. 

 

When the other man finally pulls back, there’s a cruel smirk curling his swollen lips. Tangled hair hangs over his eyes, casting his face in shadow, as he hums, wicked and low. 

 

“I think that can be arranged,” he answers just loud enough for their counterparts to hear. 

 

It’s an invitation and a trick, but nothing makes his pulse quicken more than when the corrupted version of his wife says, “Until the next time, Doctor.”

 

The crackle of electricity is the next thing he knows, space-time tearing and reforming around them. River’s arm falls to her side, and the Doctor releases his grip. It’s not like River to get bored with banter, but she seems cross so he holds his tongue, focusing instead on blinking away shadows. The silhouette of their entangled duplicates burns behind his eyes like sunspots on an exhausted retina.   

 

Banishing his thoughts, the Doctor investigates their surroundings. A deep inhale tells him they’re rematerialized close to an ocean, and judging by the thickness of the ozone, probably near the planet’s equator. 

 

“You could just look, you know,” River scolds, winging a brow at his theatrics. 

 

“Where’s the fun in that?” He grins back, bright and delighted to see she isn’t cross enough to give him the silent treatment. 

 

He spins around, his theory confirmed when he finds a large body of water before them. Angry waves slosh and churn like a vat of acid, sizzling and popping in unnatural ways. There used to be a city here, a bustling, thriving metropolis, until their chaotic counterparts blew it up just to get his attention.

 

The Doctor turns away, expectant eyes searching what’s left of the barren planet. "Where's the TARDIS?"

 

“I parked her a nanosecond out of sync with space-time,” River explains, holstering her weapon. “They’ll never find her." 

 

River busies herself adjusting the settings on her scanner. For what, he isn't sure. Signs of life, perhaps. She won't find any. In all his years, he's never seen anything like it before, the reckless abandon in his other self's eyes, the way they took lives with the flip of a switch all to lure him to their doorstep. He's never felt reality shudder the way it did when his other self flashed that Cheshire cat smile. He'll never forget the way the other River looked at him, like he was a lamb for the slaughter.

 

The River before him now is nothing like the woman he saw before, and yet he can't help but watch her hands. They move in a rhythm that's all their own, nimble and quick, and he tries to shake off the feeling of those same fingers wrapped around his throat. 

 

"Did you find what you were looking for?" her voice floats to him through a haze and the Doctor wills his brain to cooperate, clearing his throat.

 

"Yes," he declares with an admiral amount of conviction. "They're not from here."

 

River snorts, "I could have told you that. They reek of antimatter."

 

"They came through the void, broke through into the bubble of our universe."

 

"But why?"

 

He swallows. "They burned the last one." The words sit heavy for a moment, River's eyes fixed on his. "As far as I gathered, this is what they do, break into one universe, kill off any living versions of, well, me, and destroy it before moving onto the next.”

 

River shakes her head, confusion and disbelief creasing her brow. "You can't be serious. This has to be a trick. You and I, we'd never..." her voice trails off, dejected by the deeds they'd witnessed only a moment ago.

 

"Infinite universes, River," he shrugs, as if he's not speaking his greatest fear aloud. "We were bound to tread a dark path in one of them."

 

Another wave of silence descends on them, and he can tell by the way River's eyes break from his, by the way they stare absently at her hands that she shares his fears. With pasts like theirs, with nightmares lurking just beneath their skin, they were bound to be monsters in some reality, to ache to tear time apart the way it's always sought to separate them.

 

“What did he say to you?” her voice is soft, but the tender question is enough to shatter the stillness around them. 

 

A noncommittal frown tugs downward at his lips, as he averts eyes. “Nothing. Just empty threats.”

 

It's a lie, and River must read it in his voice or in the lines around his mouth, because her face hardens like stone, resolve settling in her bones. “We need a plan," River states, and when the Doctor fails to deliver one, she continues, “I was thinking we capture and relocate. Shouldn’t be too hard if we can separate them from one another.“

 

“It won’t be that easy," he counters, and even to his own ears, his words sound ominous. "They won’t go without a fight.”

 

“What are you proposing, Doctor?” she accuses, unnerved and wary. The Doctor swallows hard, but before his lips part, River speaks again, refusing to let him break his own rules. "We'll find a way. No one knows you like I do. If anyone can talk sense into you, it's me."

 

"And if he won't listen to reason?"

 

"Well," she sighs, one shoulder shrugging and the ghost of a smirk on her lips. "Then I guess all my training won't have been for nothing."

 


	2. Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hello, sweetie," River coos, and even to her own ears it sounds sickly, more purpose than prose.
> 
> He doesn't turn to face her, doesn't even flinch, nothing but mirth in his tone as he states, "I suppose you're here to kill me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to check out Katie's amazing[ fanart](http://regalpotato.tumblr.com/post/174442847148/he-spins-her-around-to-face-him-iron-grip-holding)!

 

“Oh, he did look like a deity – the perfect balance of danger and charm, he was at the same time fascinating and inaccessible, distant because of his demonstrated flawlessness, and possessing such strength of character that he was dismaying and at the same time utterly attractive in an enticing and forbidden way."

-Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice

 

* * *

 

 

She finds him in a desert near one of the planet's poles. It should be daylight, but instead it’s dark, causality already cracking under the strain of the foreign invaders. The air around her is fevered, like a body fighting off a disease and it won't stop until the virus is neutralized. Her other self is nowhere to be found, but that's good. It's better this way, better if he's alone. The Doctor has always been much easier to tame when the only distraction is her smile. She doesn't try to be stealthy, doesn't try to sneak up on him. Instead, she sashays toward him as she always has, weapon holstered and an endearment on her lips.

 

"Hello, sweetie," River coos, and even to her own ears it sounds sickly, more purpose than prose.

 

He doesn't turn to face her, doesn't even flinch, nothing but mirth in his tone as he states, "I suppose you're here to kill me."

 

"Maybe I'm here to wave the white flag," River muses, circling him from a safe distance. When his face enters her line of sight, all she finds there is pursed, intrigued lips. 

 

“A good girl like you? Surely not.”

 

"Maybe I'm tired of being good."

 

River takes deliberate steps towards him, and he turns to face her. A cruel smirk scars the once sweet mouth she’s so used to peppering with morning kisses. Those long fingers of his rub together, and all she can think of is _friction_ and _warmth._ But the man before her is cold and distant even through his flamboyant disguise.  “And you’ve come to me to, what, exactly, show you the way?”  

 

“I’m not looking for a shepherd,” River confesses, coming to a stop in front of him, invading his personal space. Her hearts are racing and it’s hard to distinguish between the fervor and fear coursing through her veins. Her fingers dare to find their way to his chest, walking up his sternum, stopping just short of the bow tie wrapped around his neck like a noose. “Just another wolf to hunt with.”

 

Her fingers still, eyes shifting up to meet his. This close, they’re darker than her Doctor's - not in color, but in essence. His brow is just as heavy, and yet there are shadows under his eyes, purple circles that speak of sleep deprivation and a shattered conscience. He studies her in return, those dark orbs tracing the contours of her face like he can mold her with his gaze alone. She wonders what he finds there, what secrets he reads in the apples of her cheeks. Do her lips curve in the same ways his River’s do? Or has the snarl in his wife’s smile reshaped her into something new? 

 

His hands find her skin, calloused and soot-coated fingertips grazing over her biceps. There’s almost a softness in his expression as his gaze falls to her throat, her collar, her hearts.

 

“It was you, you know,” he starts, voice quiet like a secret whispered between sheets, “that pulled me under all those years ago."

 

River swallows past the lump that statement puts her throat. She doesn’t have to ask for clarification; he continues to spin a story, her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her teeth as his hand drops lower, traveling along her shoulder blade and down to the small of her back, curling around her hip.

 

"You were the one to lead me into the beautiful dark.”

 

It’s blame and salvation on his tongue, benediction and resentment folded into a lover’s caress. She’s lost in the sound of it, hypnotized by the way his lips fold around words that worship her like a god. 

 

“You lit me on fire,” he breathes, reverence in his tone as his fingers abandon their grip on her shoulder to toy with a stray curl. “You taught me to burn, and together, we set the cosmos ablaze.”

 

He’s lost in a memory or a nightmare, destruction churning behind his eyes. River’s scared to move, scared to breath, lest she disturb the quiet peace fighting back the monster inside him. But she has a job to do, a promise to fulfill, so she pushes the fear aside, burying it where it belongs. A mask of bravery pebbles across her skin like armour, and River finds herself pulled toward him, balancing on her toes as she leans up to meet him.

 

As they inch closer, she can taste him even before their lips meet, her breath a quiet plea, barely disturbing the air between them as she sighs, "Teach me, honey." 

 

Their mouths collide and the taste of him is sharp and sweet and _wrong._ It’s everything her Doctor isn’t, antimatter and shattered time and the faintest hint of ash on his tongue. His kiss is every bit as desperate her Doctor’s; it’s the lips that are foreign, rough and chapped and wicked. It’s more teeth than caress, nipping at her lips until the sting of copper fills her mouth. The fingers on her hips squeeze tight enough to bruise and River gasps in spite of herself, arching into his chest. 

 

It isn’t the first time she’s had prints in the shape of his palm etched into her skin, but the hands that grip her now do so in a way her Doctor never would, like he’s taking rather than giving, more controlling than cradling. Pressed this close to him, she can feel every edge. He’s leaner than her Doctor, sharper, more lithe, his muscles tense, wiry like a trap ready to spring. Something inside her sparks, somewhere secret and dark roaring to life. She knows she shouldn’t, but she can’t help the way her fists curl around the lapels of his singed coat. 

 

He doesn’t kiss her like he did his River, neither as desperate nor as devoted. The lust is there, though, simmering beneath the surface of his very skin. It’s a part of his soul, it seems, the desire to surrender himself to her no matter their disposition. Her tongue slides against his, trying to decipher his secrets by tasting the burnt atoms that make up his being. There’s no answers or blinding light to be found behind the sharpness of his teeth. If anything, his mouth only drags her further into shadows and darkness.

 

She breaks the kiss before she loses herself completely, panting for air. The imposter before her doesn't crumble or gasp. He pulls away only slightly, just enough to lean into her neck. “Poison is just foreplay, sweetheart,” he taunts, smirking lips brushing against her ear. "If you want to kill me, you'll have to try harder than that.”

 

River pushes against him, breaking his hold on her before she loses the chance. A merciless left hook is aimed for his jaw, but the man before her is quicker. He blocks and twists like he'd seen the attack coming, read it in her body before she’d made up her mind to do it. He slips away from her as if this is a choreographed dance, as if feral claws scratching at his eyes and reaching for his throat are nothing more than a tango to him.

 

Her own Doctor would never fight her, never have the need, not anymore. Her heartstrings ache for the man before her, for whatever it is she’s done to him in another life. But the flicker of empathy dies the moment their eyes meet again. There’s no gold or green streaking around his irises. There is only rot and insanity and the ashes of a man she might have once loved.

 

"Been there. Done that,” River pants out, wiping away the hallucinogen staining her lips with the back of her hand. “I’m not trying to kill you. I’m going to send you back to Hell where you belong."

 

"Nothing sets the mood like an eloquent threat,” he chuckles. “Even if it is an empty one.”

 

“You desolated an entire planet with a snap of your fingers,” she spits, sadness and disgust on her tongue. “The only empty thing here is you.”

 

“Well there’s something I haven’t seen in a while,” he muses aloud, and though their gaze is locked, it’s clear the words are more self-indulgent than meant for her. “Remorse looks terrible on you, dear.”

 

“Yeah?” River retorts, tone sharp as daggers as quick fingers remove her blaster and aim it at his chest. “How about anger?”

 

“Now, _there’s_ my girl,” he drawls, his smirk deepening with newfound interest.

 

He takes a step to the side and River counters without hesitation, snapping, “I’m not your girl.”

 

The predator before her hums, tongue snaking out to moisten swollen ruby lips, tasting the static on the air. “Do you have it in you to shoot me, River?”

 

He spreads his arms, twirling, coat tails billowing behind him. It’s all challenge and invitation, revealing himself to her, daring her to pull the trigger. “You?” River asks, winging a mocking brow. Her thumb shifts, a soft click as she removes the safety. “Without question.”

 

“I like your spirit.” The compliment rumbles in his chest like loose wiring, his lecherous gaze burning across her form. “Watching you break would be a privilege.”

 

Her skin crawls under the weight of his stare, eyes lingering on pulse points and secret places. It's unclear if he wants her life or her lust, if he craves to see her wanton or wounded, and maybe that’s because they’re one in the same in his eyes. Maybe to these polluted versions of them, poison is just another word for pleasure.

 

“But the missus can get awful jealous,” he reasons. There’s no reprieve to be found when the hunger in his eyes finally fades away, dark thoughts replaced by ones only slightly less ravenous. "So perhaps not."

 

He lunges for her then, the slight spring in his step the only warning River receives before her attacker crosses the space between them in one quick stride. She doesn’t pull the trigger. Call it sympathy or humanity or the echo of a long ago promise, but she refuses to shoot him, this man who wears her husband’s face. The lookalike doesn’t share her sentimentality, doesn’t hesitate in his attempts to disarm her.

 

River’s training roars to the forefront of her mind, instincts flooded with _movetwistduck._ Muscle memory ignites like an old flame, _backfistkicksuckerpunch._ He meets her blow for blow, blocking, countering, toying with her like a puppet on a string. He’s faster than she is, stronger too, and River’s hearts race inside her chest, synapses firing in a desperate attempt to _retreat, escape, find a way out._

 

The back of his hand collides with her cheek, the sting of flesh on flesh from knuckles that ought to stroke her face in a tender caress. It dazes her more than it should, and the minor lapse is all the opportunity he needs. His wiry embrace folds around her like a bear trap, pinning her arms to her sides, her back pressed tight to his front. River grunts and struggles and fires a warning shot into the dirt, hoping for his foot.  Her thrashing only makes him puller her closer, coiling around her like a python. The oxygen is forced from her chest, and River slings her head black, searching for his nose. Her actions stop the moment she catches sight of steel. It sparkles in the remaining starlight, and she freezes, holding deathly still as he brings the weapon to her throat. It’s the same weapon her false self had wielded earlier, and River can’t help but wonder why they share it, this rusted, jaded thing. What dark day binds them to it? What hideous sin now commands them to clutch at it like rosary?

 

"I’ll never forget the first time I saw you bathed in flames, how your hair shimmered even though it was coated with soot.” His grip is bruising as he buries his face in her curls, breath hot and panting against her neck. “Blood and dirt on a white dress,” he inhales deep, confessions spilled in a low and lecherous tone. “If I had my way, you’d never wear any color but red.”

 

“That wasn’t me,” River pants out, starved for breath. It’s softer than she means it to be, her argument barely a whisper, and she isn’t quite sure anymore, which one of them she’s trying to convince. “We’re not the same.”

 

He spins her around to face him, iron grip holding her hostage. River tries to get her weapon at the ready, but he’s too quick, too strong, and her arms end up pinned against his chest, the barrel of her gun kissing his jaw. Her eyes fix on the hollow of his throat. His skin is paler than her Doctor, pulse quicker, more erratic, as if even the blood in his veins has forgotten the importance of time and the havoc one reeks when it falls out of sync.

 

“Aren’t you?” His brow quirks, lips twitching with foreknowledge from another time and place. “You're the same person, really. Deep down, you can feel that wildness burning away inside you, just like she can. You still hate your maker just as much as she does. But my River moved on. Lust for revenge is just another alter to pray to. We burned hers to the ground, but you? You're still living on your knees.”

 

Her insides bristle against the current of this voice, his words awakening the ugliest parts of her that she does her best to keep hidden. A swarm of rage and guilt buzz under her skin like angry hornets, because, deep down, she knows he's right. Vengeance is a beast she keeps caged tightly between her hearts, sealed up tight, ignored, forgotten. Lust for her maker's blood to be spilled, the kind of guilty pleasure she only ever admits to herself in her darkest moments. She's never given in though, never indulged her twisted fantasy, never given the woman who made her exactly what she deserves. River's never been able to determine if that makes her weak or strong, if taking Kovarian's life is something she _can't_ do or something she _won't_ do. 

 

Is this what would become of her if she ever gave in to the monster inside of her? Does killing her maker, the closest thing to a mother she's ever known, turn her into everything her owners always said she would be? The man before her holds her tighter, cradling her to him much the same way her husband does on the nights she wakes up screaming, pulse racing and hands shaking for reasons she can't remember. His arm wraps around her shoulders, the crook of his elbow cradling her neck. The knife clasped lazily in his hand grazes her cheek. It’s cool as it scrapes across her skin, not enough pressure to cut, but enough to make her shiver.

 

"We've killed dozens of versions of me with this,” he confesses, voice distant even as he studies her. “But never one of you." He twists the blade in his hands, watching how it sparkles off the remaining stars in the sky. His eyes are fixed on her jugular and she isn't sure if his words are even meant for her, if he's even aware of his own tongue anymore, or if he's merely speaking his thoughts aloud. "I wonder what it will feel like, taking your life."

 

"What’s stopping you from finding out?" she taunts, struggling against his hold.

 

"You're rarer than you think," he chuckles, toying with her as he leans in close. His breath on her cheeks is a kiss and a toxin as he warns, “You see, in most universes, he doesn't save you. He watches you burn and does _nothing_ to stop it.”

 

The words hiss off his tongue like a curse, like a scar across his hearts, a shadow of a future he outran. From what he saved her, River isn’t sure. Some dark, inevitable day in her future, she supposes, some rescue mission gone wrong. But that isn’t what makes her pulse skip. His recklessness is far more terrifying, remorseless and determined eyes boring into her. For the first time in a long time, River finds that she’s scared, her greatest fear staring back at her. She’s stunned and sad and entirely enraptured as she gazes up at him, wondering how her husband could ever have gotten so lost, so buried.

 

“What did you do, Doctor?" Her voice is pained and sorrowful, because how could he fall so far and why wasn’t she there to catch him? “What could possibly turn you into this?” 

 

He scoffs in her ear, cruel and in control, “The fact that you don’t know just proves he doesn’t deserve you.” His face changes and it could almost be a smile it if wasn’t for the emptiness in his hollow eyes. "I had to make a choice.”

 

His admission is soft and sweet, broken and desperate and unburdened by sin, his eyes an echo of an unspeakable price. In that moment, it’s clear that whatever it was he'd done, it had cost him everything. “I did what I had to, to bring you back. And in doing so, I broke every rule.” 

 

“I would never ask that of you,” she breathes, her voice too soft for the chaos around them. His face falters, a tenderness clawing its way up through malice. His lips part ever-so-slightly, like he’s fighting the urge to swallow her whole. And maybe he would. If he could, maybe he’d consume every bit of her, take what’s left of her and make it his own. 

 

“I know you wouldn’t.” He lifts a gentle hand, cupping her face. Nostalgia dances around his irises, consumed by a softness that looks disturbingly like pity, hazel eyes mourning the life he left behind, the one he sold for the sake of her soul. “That’s the difference between her and you. She’s not afraid to ask. She doesn’t hide from me. Not anymore.” 

 

The kindness vanishes as quickly as it came, forgotten to a void, to something cold and angry as his grip on the blade tightens. 

 

"But your Doctor is weak," he spits her husband's title, and it's only then that she realizes his fury isn't meant for her. "He doesn't love you like I love you. I burned whole star systems to bring you back. I made a deal with the devil."

 

"And then you became one," River hisses back, using sheer defiance and what little mobility she has to slam her forehead into his nose. The shock of it is surprise enough for her to wiggle free, to slip from his grasp and dance out of reach.

 

"No, no, no," he giggles as he says it, wiping the crimson from the corner of his mouth. "We _killed_ the devil, and we became gods." 

 

She knows that look in his eyes; she’s seen it in the nightmares of her youth. The Time Lord Victorious starring in bedtime stories about what can happen when a creature of great power seeks to abuse it. And maybe he’s right. “Maybe you do care for her more than he cares for me. But you know what?” she admits, pity in her eyes as she stares at the broken man before her. “If he was capable of the things you are, he wouldn’t be the man I love.”

 

The confession makes the creature before her bristle, clutching the knife in his hand like a cross, violence his only religion. “I brought you back,” he snaps, speaking like a man possessed. "I stopped letting you down."

 

“You let me down the moment you forgot who you were,” River proclaims, and she spots it instantly, the moment she becomes a heretic in his eyes. She can read it in the way his shoulders twitch, the fabric of his belief fraying under her protests. Her continued defiance burns like betrayal, any trace of softness in his eyes disintegrating as he realizes she's not his River and never could or would be.

 

"Don’t you see?" he hisses, lunging for her with intent this time, raw voice hitching even as he testifies, "I'm finally the man who deserves you!”

 

It sounds like gospel, like blind, drunken faith. He prays to no one but their shared darkness now, because without it, his crusades become nothing but pointless killing. The old, familiar sadness in his eyes has been replaced by something terrible. He is so very lost and, yet, somehow found, empty of all else and full of only her, as if he traded guilt for dark, irrevocable devotion. His blade swipes at her, a mania in his eyes that says he's too devout to see reason, too far in to ever want a way out.

 

River dodges the attack, keeping just out of reach. A sane soul would run, would teleport away while she still has the chance. There's irony to be found in the fact that she can't, that she refuses to leave him, that every fiber of her being wants nothing more than to save this man she was designed to murder.

 

"Please, Doctor, let me help you," she begs. "Whatever it is, however you think you failed me, we can fix it. Together."

 

"There's no fixing what we broke," he confesses. Feral eyes study her, the torment in them a gift only she can give, the path he chose one only she could lead him down.  "There's only us. We're all that matters now."

 

The dark declaration hisses and pops like static in the air. Fear shoots through River's chest, hearts racing, blood coursing like lightning through her veins until her limbs are numb and heavy. Standing before her is everything she fought against for so long. It's every nightmare she's ever had, every bedtime story that made her shiver. The man before her is a perversion of everything she is and stands for, all the lives she gave up for the promise that he was worth it, that he was more than the stories she'd been told, that he was _good._

 

Flashes of her training flood her brain, fire and brimstone and goblins and fairy tales. Behind her eyes she sees an orphanage and an astronaut suit. She sees gravestones and endless war. The thought of what will happen to this universe if he's allowed to live shifts like angry water in her mind. Timelines crackle around her, memories tangling up with days not yet lived, until she's choking on the past or the possible future.

 

He lunges for her again, almost succeeding this time. River's vision blurs, the gun in her hand heavier than it was a moment before. He steps toward her, and she steps back. Her heel catches on uneven ground, a gasp on her lips as her balance is compromised. It's his hand that catches her, harsh and cold, not the loving grip that’s saved her time and time again. The fingers coiled around her wrist are a brand, squeezing and twisting until the gasp on her lips morphs into a scream. A sharp pain rips through her forearm until her grip loosens, her blaster clattering to the floor. 

 

His other hand swings wide, the blade shimmering in the moonlight, eager to be sated by blood. Something inside River snaps, or perhaps it slots back into place, memories from another life making her pulse steady even as her mind goes blank. Instinct swallows her whole and it almost feels like a dream, her body a lucid thing that she can feel but not quite control. She ducks and turns, grabs and shoves, and the hilt of his knife finds her palm. His breath is hot and ragged as he yanks back and away, but River's grip is sure, focused, _fixed_  

 

_point. This must happen. This always happens._

 

And then they're falling, careening towards the floor. The sudden jolt clears her mind, just a little, just enough. His lean form beneath her is as familiar as the rare but cherished breakfast in bed on a Sunday morning. Her weight presses down into the man who wears her husband's face, the sting of something hard digging into her chest. A slow spreading warmth, sticky and wrong, fills the space between them, the hilt of his weapon burning like hot coals against her palm.

 

River blinks, reality slowly coming into view like a clear raindrop on a foggy window. Adrenaline is still rich in her veins, head hazier than it has any right to be. It's only when he smiles, a ragged and choked laugh seeping off freshly paling lips, that she realizes what she's done. 

 

“Doctor,” she implores, the title little more than a fragile whisper on her lips. 

 

She doesn’t move, doesn't breathe, the air in her lungs frozen in time, because if she keeps it there, if she traps the oxygen in place then maybe she can take this back, maybe the light in his eyes will stop fading. They're so close she can see how his eyes dilate, how they expand and shudder. She sees his breath hitch, catching on the knife in his chest. She watches, her own throat dry as desert sand as he swallows, Adam's apple bobbing. His neck is paler than the one she's used to but that doesn't stop her mind from remembering all the times she's stained her husband's skin with lipstick, branded him with kisses just to mark him as _hers._

 

The man beneath her shifts, a trembling hand moving up to cup her cheek. With it he brings the shock of something wet and warm, but River's too stunned to care, her own hand framing his the way she's done a thousand times before. His thumb strokes her skin, the twitch in his lips dazed as he breathes, "You've always looked best in red.” 

 

"I'm not-" River starts, the protest scratching at her throat.

 

His hand slips from her face, smearing something sticky across her jaw. Crimson catches in the corner of her eyes, on the arm that falls to his side, and River jerks back, scrambling away in horror. Sand and stone bite at her knees, blood on her hands and face as she frantically wipes at her clothes. 

 

It's his laughter that finally makes her pause, tears pricking at her eyes as they find their way back to him, _always back to him_. He's still, apart from the chuckle rattling his torso. Hazel eyes find hers, proud and peaceful, as if dying by her hand is naught but a pastime for him. His pale lips stretch in unnatural ways, a rumble in his chest as laughter and blood bubble up his throat like poison in a caldron. “The woman who murdered me,” he muses, a pained huff ghosting off his tongue. “It could only ever have been you.”

 

River's blood runs cold as the last syllable leaves his lips, taking his life with it. His chest deflates, smooth surrender, his eyes glaze over, arm stretched out, reaching for her across bloodstained ground. His final breath hangs in the air like a noose, scarlet staining her palms and dirt under her nails. The chaos of the burning world falls quiet, and around her, there is nothing but silence. 

 


	3. Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I took care of it,” she mutters into his collar, and he isn’t sure if it’s her breath or her words that sends a shiver down his spine. 
> 
> “What do you mean?” he asks, leaning back only far enough to see her face. “You sent him back to his universe?” 
> 
> Heavy eyes refuse to meet his, red lips parting as a shuddering breath cascades between them. “I mean, the deed is done, my love.”

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

 

* * *

 

 

She should have been back by now. 

 

He’s been waiting for hours, pacing back and forth across barren sand. He promised he'd wait for her here, stay out of harm's way until she returned. They hadn't come up with a contingency plan for if she didn’t. She's _River_ , if there's one constant in the universe, it's that she'll come back to him, always. But as time ticks on, every second like a needle in his side, the Doctor can't help but begin to worry. Panic creeps over him in small waves, lapping at his mind like lazy water on a rocky shore. 

 

Deep breaths don't soothe him. The air in his lungs may as well be static, crackling against his insides like a thunderstorm. It shouldn't be like this, even if their duplicates are from another universe. He's traveled across the void before, dipped his toes in parallel universes without shredding reality. It makes no sense that it fractures now. It's as if their counterparts brought with them more than just a shattered conscience, as if they're a tidal wave of broken timelines, cresting and building with unimaginable power, as if they are a tsunami and this universe is a puddle they've come to conquer and swallow whole.  

 

It makes his skin crawl, the thought of River alone with _him._ He can't stop his mind from wandering to all the wretched things his other self might do, the things he's already done, and _River really should have been back by now_. The key in his pocket burns against his chest, and he's about to say, sod it all, summon the TARDIS, and go searching for her when a crackle behind him shatters the silence. The Doctor spins around, finding River standing before him, static still clinging to her hair. Relief floods his veins, his feet rushing to her side of their own volition. He’s to her in a moment, fingers folding around her shoulders as he takes in the sight of her. Her face is soft, tender, wary. She looks dazed and drunk on bad dreams, and it’s almost alarming when she steps into him, heavy arms lifting to wrap around his waist as she buries her face in his neck. 

 

“What’s wrong?” he stammers, embracing her as she curls into him. “What happened?”

 

River is silent for a moment, the static skipping along her skin sparking against his coat. She smells faintly of antimatter and he’s about to ask her about it, lips parting when River cuts him off.

 

“I took care of it,” she mutters into his collar, and he isn’t sure if it’s her breath or her words that sends a shiver down his spine. 

 

“What do you mean?” he asks, leaning back only far enough to see her face. “You sent him back to his universe?”  

 

Heavy eyes refuse to meet his, red lips parting as a shuddering breath cascades between them. “I mean, the deed is done, my love.”

 

The Doctor’s blood runs cold at the familiar phrase, because there’s only one time she’s ever spoken those words to him before, only one reason she would. “River,” her name falls off his tongue in a shocked exhalation. “I thought we agreed to-“

 

“They’re galaxy burners, Doctor,” she snaps, but she doesn’t pull away from him like he expects her to, like she always does when she’s angry. “They break fixed points because they like the way it makes their time sense scream. They tear apart whole universes and laugh whilst doing it. And when that bubble of reality cracks like an egg, they move onto the next one until it falls apart, too.” 

 

Her eyes burn as they look into his, a weight to her gaze he's never seen before, a melancholy that nearly steals his breath. His hands stroke her biceps, soothing, and when her arms release him to drop to her sides, the Doctor trails his fingers down her forearm, capturing hers with his own. He takes her hand in his, cradling it to his chest. Her palm is as heavy as his conscience. Secondhand guilt bids his head to hang, but he hides it well, disguising the contrition by grazing his lips against her knuckles.

 

The truth is, he knows what they do. He saw the horror of it with his own two eyes. The only question he can't seem to answer, the one thing left unaccounted for is _why_? Why bother spreading their plague? Why did a knife to his throat excite them both so, and why did the sight of such a blade make his mind sizzle with long-forgotten memories?

 

“How did we ever become that?” It’s spoken to the air rather than to her, a dark curiosity aimed at fate. 

 

“It doesn’t matter,” is all River says, that iron will of hers settling over her like armour. “I took care of him, and now you have to take care of her.” 

 

"Take care of…" the Doctor stutters in protest. "River, I-"

 

"We don't have a choice!" she cuts in, silencing him. "You know what I’m like, Doctor, what I’ll do for you." She pauses, an emotion he's almost scared to name fluttering across her features. "What I’d be like without you.” 

 

_Normal,_ is the first thought that springs to mind. Without him she would have grown up a normal little girl in a quaint village. She would never have had to make the choices she’s made, do the things she’s done. Without him she wouldn’t have suffered as she has today. It’s what she’s like _with_ him that worries him so, reckless and brash and too brave for her own good. His existence is a dark mark on River's timeline, every breath he takes a stain on her life. Terrible things have been done to her by him and because of him, and worse still are the terrible thing she's done _for_ him.

 

He doesn't have to imagine to what she's alluding. He has the feeling he knows exactly what she'd be like without him; much the same way he'd be without her, he suspects. And suddenly the existence of their dark selves isn’t so farfetched after all. The decent into madness flickers in his mind, a timeline, a path to ruin he's never before seen. It isn't a difficult potential future to swallow, not looking at her now, at how her skin crawls and her heavy eyes won’t meet his. It isn't hard to picture what the other, jaded version of her might be capable of if all her hope was stolen away. His River was willing to test the boundaries of time to show her love, but a River without a conscience? He dares not imagine the ruin she would leave in her wake. A swell of pity overcomes him as he thinks of the torment she could unleash upon the galaxy, the _universe_. Exactly the same horrors his other self no doubt would have done in the same position, what he fears might one day become of him should he spend too much time alone or go too long without her. The memory of the other woman’s knife at his throat makes his insides churn, and he wonders about the fidelity of his other self's words, if River was truly to blame, if she really _is how we got this way._

 

Looking at her now, he'd say it's impossible. His wife has never and would never lead him astray. There's a softness in her eyes, as if she's begging him to believe just that. She is open and pleading in a way he's never seen before, and the Doctor finds his breath has been stolen, shocked and grateful at the vulnerable side she’s allowing him to see. And maybe it's the dwindling hope in his River's pale features that makes him find his nerve, that steels him for what they’ll have to do to keep the universe safe as he concedes, "Okay."

 

River's eyes snap to his, surprise and relief and a flicker of delight hidden in a sea of green. "Okay," she agrees, an echo of a tired smile playing at her lips as she tugs at his hand. "This way."

 

She drags him along, trailing him through the desecrated remains of fallen cities, eyes on the scanner in her other hand as she tracks down her doppelganger. She is focused and determined, a one-track mind always her best distraction from the horror of reality. The Doctor studies her, wondering what she's been through, what she had to endure at the hands of his duplicate. His gaze tracks over her stiff shoulders and dirt-smudged skin, inspecting her body for clues. Her grey dress is stained, torn slightly at the hem, caked in mud or blood or something equally as wretched. A stab of guilt punctures a hole between his hearts, wondering if the ruined fabric is evidence of the sins she's committed in his name.

 

"River," he starts, breaking the overbearing silence. He isn’t sure why, but there’s a question ringing inside his cerebellum, a morbid curiosity burning on the back of his tongue, and he can’t help but ask, "How did you do it?"

 

To her credit, she hardly even flinches. Not that he expected her to. He tells himself that her icy demeanor is entirely for his benefit, that it has nothing to do with the sordid past she keeps from him, that she isn’t numb to killing, not really. This is simply what his wife always does. She locks herself behind walls to shield him from what she doesn’t want him to see. He knows River well enough by now to understand that she turns herself to stone when she hurts the most.

 

But her assassin skin is quite convincing when she slips inside it. She doesn't answer him straight away, eyes focused on the horizon looming ahead of them as if nothing matters but their destination, as if the past is a dead thing she buried in a shallow grave. He's about to ask her again, to wake her from the trance she’s entered, when River’s gaze drops, refusing to meet his eyes. “I shot him."

 

It's a lie, no doubt, her cavalier tone a cover for whatever horrors she's committed. It doesn’t stop his chest from tightening, and it’s with a sense of disappointment that he realizes his wife is back to herself, the woman he was expecting, the one who would say anything to spare him an ounce of pain, no matter the cost to herself. 

 

His grip on their clasped hands tightens, tugging her just a little closer as they march through the desert. This close, it’s easy to lose himself in the sharpness of her cheeks, to be distracted by the corners of her mouth. Though her gaze is fixed on the sand beneath her feet, he can still read her expression, still see the deception even if he can’t decipher the truth.

 

He’ll ask her one day, after this is over and they’re safe and alone in the stillness of their bedroom. He’ll ask her how it felt to pull the one trigger she promised she never would. He’ll wrap his bow tie around her wrist, a reminder, a promise, _I’m here, I’m yours._ He’ll bare himself to her with the hope that she’ll be as vulnerable with him then as she was only a moment ago when she fell into his arms. And when her eyes water with guilt and her voice trembles, he’ll kiss away her tears and offer her nothing but forgiveness. 

 

He wants to speak, mouth opening only to discover that there are no words, nothing he can offer to ease her suffering or undo any misdeeds. There’s nothing he’s ever been able to do to spare her; he's never been able to save her in any of the ways he’s longed to.  The Doctor’s eyes travel to the stars, some of them already going out. His thoughts must be palpable, vibrating from his palm into hers, because it's her voice that brings him back down from the clouds, distant and reverent.

 

“He lost me,” is all she can bring herself to say, her voice barely a whisper as she speaks. “I _died_ and- ” Her breath stutters and his eyes gravitate to her, pulled in by the weight of her confession. “It changed him.”

 

The air around him seems to thicken, making it hard for him to breathe in the midst of River's words. Is this what becomes of him once their time runs out? Is he seeing a glimpse of their future, a future where he gets to love her fully without the looming presence of a Library bathed in shadows? Is his conscience the price he’ll have to pay to keep her? Does he drag her into hell with him? Did some poor, broken version of him break time to save her and now they can’t stop running, can’t go back?

 

It’s a reality he’s never considered, never _let_ himself consider, but now that it’s tangible, he feels his insides tingle. A River that has seen days beyond the Library was pressed against him only hours ago, and it shouldn’t make his body sing in the way that it does. It shouldn't spark excitement and glee that he found a way. He didn't understand it before, why he was so drawn to her, why his eyes couldn't tear themselves from her wicked smile. His senses could detect it even if his conscious mind couldn’t. They were as linear as they've ever been for him. She knew things his River didn't, her molecules bouncing off his in ways that made the timelines in his head dizzy and drunk. He was the closest he's ever been to his heart's desire, and he tasted the excitement of it on his tongue even if he couldn't work out why.

 

The pull to his own River has grown stronger somehow too, this revelation he thought was impossible drawing him ever deeper into her thrall. He wonders how the other him managed it. He wonders if that’s what pushed this other him to the breaking point, if keeping her or losing her was what had cost him his sanity. He wonders if it was worth it.

 

River stops in her tracks, turning to face him. Their eyes meet, and the storms he finds there makes their clasped hands feel more like an anchor than a buoy. It’s heavy and desperate and his greedy lungs clench around his breath like it’s the last one he’ll ever have.

 

"He told me," River breathes, voice soft, timid, and he isn't sure which she's more afraid of, his reaction or her own words. "He told me how you sat and watched me burn for you."

 

There's no accusation in her voice or in her stare, only sympathy for _him,_ and it makes something twist in his gut, organs turned inside out as his most haunting memory hangs in the air between them like a noose. Without permission, his mind flashes back to a shadow-infested room, back to metal biting at his wrist, the woman who knows his name, his future just out of reach. It's all so clear, her eyes just as devastated now as they were then. They're standing on a grave made by them from another life and he may as well be watching her burn yet again for all the sadness lurking behind those pools of green.

 

The Doctor swallows hard, mouth as dry as the ash they stand upon. He wants to deny it, to ease her mind and his conscience. But the truth isn't easily banished. Like a snake in the grass, it waits. Even as his lips part, prepared to back away, to distance them from danger, he knows it's already too late, foreknowledge a venom already ravaging her veins.

 

“River,” he starts, mouth moving before he knows how his thoughts will end, “whatever he said to you-“

 

“It’s okay. You don’t have to lie to me, Doctor," River soothes his wounds before he can hide them, pity and sorrow contorting her features, because it isn’t herself for which she mourns; but rather, for him. "I know it’s true. I can see it in your eyes.” She slips the scanner into her belt, abandoning the cool plastic to stroke her hand gently down his face instead. Green eyes pierce straight through him in a way they never have before, looking past closed doors and all his best-kept secrets, and deep into his soul. “I’ve always seen it. I just didn’t know what I was looking for.”

 

She smiles, and it isn't a smile at all, not really. Her lips stretch like she's being ripped in two, torn between sentiment and suffering. Her mouth curls and in it he sees every moonlit dance and tap on the tip of her nose. But her eyes are something else entirely, rich with demons and shrouded by darkness. The crease in her brow is pity and pain and it's eerily familiar, a mirror of an emotion he'd seen buried in the eyes of his other self. Whatever secrets his counterpart possessed, River must have discovered them. She must have seen her future in his eyes or perhaps he painted her a picture with his villainous tongue, but however it came to be, River found something in the darkness that the Doctor couldn’t. She’s always known him better than he knows himself.

 

River somehow follows his train of thought, reads it in the way all his greatest fears flicker at the forefront of his mind. Her hand falls from where it frames his face, leaving his cheek cold without the comfort of her touch. "There was something in his eyes when he told me, a pain deeper than anything I've seen before. Or so I thought. But I was wrong. You hold that same pain inside you too, sweetie."

 

Her mouth folds around the endearment like it doesn’t belong to her anymore, tainted and wrong. He feels as if he’s somehow stolen something from her and a small voice in his mind whispers, _her life_.

 

“I’ve wanted to tell you,” he breathes, the words a desperate rush off his tongue. He feels himself fracture as he speaks, his resolve crumbling at her feet, centuries worth of secrets finally sliding off his chest. The Doctor sucks in a deep breath and it burns in a way it hasn’t since before he knew her, knew the guilt of losing her, as if his lungs have forgotten the feel of clean air. It isn’t fair that she found out this way, from _him._ She shouldn’t have found out at all. This was the one burden he was supposed to carry alone. “I’m so sorry, Riv-“

 

“Don’t apologize,” she quiets him, refusing to mourn for a future she hasn’t lived, a playful shrug to her shoulders and a trusting twitch to her lips as she says, “There’s no need. I know you'll find a way around it."

 

Dread and hope ravage his body in equal measure, her confidence in him a source of elation and despair. Her faith in him is crushing and he finds himself breathless as he begs her for insight on how to save her own life. "How?"

 

River practically scoffs, jovial and carefree at the confrontation of her own death. "You'll think of something, spring it on me at the last minute, like you always do."

 

The Doctor pales, eyebrows raising in surprise, because it's not like River to expect things of him, not things like this. She knows better than most that fate can be cruel, that time is a fickle mistress that often delights in twisting them in the most trying ways. It isn't like her to be selfish, to make demands on her own behalf. She has always been more martyr than master, more than willing to crucify herself in the name of their love affair than ever risk changing it. But there's no softness in her eyes anymore, no bend in her iron will, nothing subtle about her defiance.

 

"What if I can't?" he asks meekly, shame creeping up his spine, because what if her faith in him is misguided? What if he's not the man she thinks he is? He sees it on her face, the moment she realizes he had no intention of tampering with the tapestry of time, that he planned on quietly suffering while she faded from him the way all those before her have.

 

"There's always a loophole,” River argues, indignant as she drowns out his protests. She doesn’t want his excuses. Sympathy and understanding make way for disappointment and sadness, the hand still clasped in his tightening – not out of love or comfort, but insistence.  “You always find a way out."

 

Her stares at her blankly, her name like penance on his tongue. "River, it isn’t that simple. You _know_ how time works. We can’t just-“

 

"Don’t lecture me about time. According to the history books, you _died_ , on the day of our wedding no less. You said it was fixed and then you did the impossible.” Her eyes are clouded with something he’s never seen before, the forgiveness he usually finds there swallowed by offense as River’s shoulders slack in a surrender that feels an awful lot like judgement. ”Or do you only perform miracles when it's your life at risk?"

 

_Not one line, don't you dare_ , echoes in his mind, the melody of it a tune that’s haunted him for centuries. Her dying words were a request, and he gave her all he could, a promise to leave the days worth sacrificing herself for untouched. And yet, here she stands, demanding that he break it.

 

"What if we end up like them?" he asks quietly, voicing the one fear separating him from his heart's desire. Changing time comes at a price, and he isn't sure his humanity is one he's willing to pay.

 

River senses his hesitance, her hand breaking from his so both her palms can frame his face. Her grip is tighter, more urgent than her usual gentle touch as she presses her body against his. They're lined up from navel to nose, her double heart beat an echo of his own against his chest. His hands find her hips the way they've done a million times before, and River's lips part like she means to kiss him, to banish his every fear by way of her mouth and tongue. But her eyes never break from his, those pools of green boring into his like she's searching for something precious or terrible.

 

Whatever it is she's looking for must be written on his very soul or absent entirely because the corner of her lips twitch upward in a soft, reassuring smile as she promises, "You're nothing like him."

 

Her words ought to comfort him. They almost always do, but this time they only make his hearts skip, their beating organs suddenly out of sync. She is right in front of him and somehow she is still distant, her words rattling inside his hollow chest because she's asking him to risk the one thing he promised he never would.

 

Even when she’s looking at him like that, like he isn’t the man she fell in love with, some things can’t be changed, no matter how much he wants to. Even now that she knows, the timelines around them haven’t shifted, her death still as sure as it’s always been, still a gaping hole in his chest. Even when twisted by foreknowledge, the history between them doesn’t budge or bend. It remains as solid as a lead weight in sand, immovable even as the particles around it shift and scatter to the winds of time.

 

“I just can’t,” he exhales, and maybe that makes him a coward, maybe he’s been hiding behind a promise because all along he’s the one that doesn’t want to risk rewriting it all.

 

River’s fury and disappointment radiate off her in waves, and he isn’t sure if it’s anger or agony that makes her eyes water. But tears build behind her beautiful eyes the same way they did on top of a pyramid all those decades ago. It makes his insides ache the way reality had. She's looking at him as if he is less than, without, and it shatters him the way her defiance once shattered time.

 

“I tore the universe apart to tell you I love you.” It’s a statement and an accusation, her breath dragging out between her lips in a disbelieving hiss. “And you ‘ _just cant?’”_

 

 “Time, _this_ time, can’t be rewritten.” It pains him to say it, but nothing cuts quite as deep as the way her hands drop from his cheeks. Her crestfallen palms slip away like he isn't hers to touch, like everything she's ever believed is a lie. She’s hasn’t looked at him quite like this since Utah, since the last time she refused to admit that some things are fixed.

 

"Rule four hundred and eight," she says quietly, releasing a heavy exhale, her chest deflating. He may as well be a stranger for the way River’s walls close up around her, her eyes a fortress he can’t see past, her face a map he can’t read. She’s looking at him like she used to, when he was young and she had all the answers. The Doctor swears something inside him dies as she sighs out, “Time is not the boss of you."

 

For words whispered so soft, they hit him like a brick. They settle in the pit of his stomach like stones, and he's helpless but to gape as his wife turns away from him. She steps out of reach and his whole body goes cold, light and warmth stolen, leaving him with nothing but _shadows that melt the flesh_ and he can't leave her there, can't believe he ever even considered giving up or giving in. He can't believe he accepted it, even for a moment, that he could ever let her die there.

 

It feels like he's failed her all over again. She’s looking straight through him, as if she can’t even see him, as if he's forgotten who he was and is and should be. She's always teaching him lessons, showing him the impossible truth. He hates that after all this time she still has to show him the way, that he fails her time and time again.

 

But not this time, he vows. If any good has come from the perversion of their other selves, it's this. He'll heed the warning. He'll fix this. If losing her is what turns him into a monster, he’ll make it so she never dies at all. He'll save her the way he should have done a long time ago. The Doctor takes a step forward, following in her wake, lips parting as the word, "Wait," falls off his tongue.

 

River doesn't turn, her eyes fixed on something in the distance. Stubborn feet march the Doctor to her side, ready to voice his declaration aloud, to set his vow in stone, when River twists, speaking before he has the chance.

 

"Get down," she hisses, grabbing him by the wrist and tugging him behind a large lump of stone that might have once been part of a building or a home.

 

He scuffs his knee and nearly trips over his own feet, his tongue still tied in knots as he blurts out, "What is it? What's wrong?"

 

"It's her, _me_." She stresses the word and the Doctor finds himself grounded, hurled back into the now against his will, all his noble intents pushed to the back of his mind.

 

The Doctor whips his head around, following her gaze until his eyes land on a lone figure trudging through the sand. It’s difficult to make out detail through the blanket of oppressive darkness, but she seems to be covered in something, hands and face stained in an unnatural hue. “Is that.. blood?”

 

“I believe so,” River breathes. Then her eyes find his, face hard as stone as she lifts her hand and offers her blaster to him. “We've only got one shot at this. Now's your chance.”

 

The Doctor's jaw drops, already shaking his head in protest. He can’t, not this. His one rule. 

 

“You have to,” River says, green eyes boring into his.

 

“You’re a better shot," is all the protest he can muster, and River softens, a tremble in her voice. 

 

“I can’t, sweetie.” The endearment is strained and jagged and desperate on her tongue. “Not again.”

 

Images of what she must have done flash before him, what she’s done all her life, always making sacrifices for him, hands always dirty to spare his the stains. River reaches for his wrist, pulling it toward her so she can press the weapon into his palm. The metal is warm from where it's been safely tucked away in her holster. It's lighter than he expected it to be, than something that takes life has any right to be. 

 

“But you can.” River's hands abandon the weapon to frame his face, her thumb stroking over the sharp contours of his cheek. “You can stop it. Stop the killing."

 

_With more killing_ rings in his mind, sharp and bitter, but her voice is velvet, soothing.

 

"The stars are going out, and it's not just a distress calls this time, darling. But _you_ can make it right again.”

 

Her palms slip from his cheeks to smooth down his chest. He's still frozen in place as she slides behind him, her chest pressed into his back as she positions him. Gentle hands smooth over his back and sides, draping herself around him. His knees shake and she must feel it, because she wraps herself around him tighter, cradling him to her, holding him up to keep him from crumbling. 

 

“He burned worlds for me,” she purrs, her voice low and hypnotic in his ear, drunk on anguish and a sick sense of awe. She glides her hand along his bicep and forearm, a barely-there touch as she straightens his arm. Her breath ghosts over his neck like a wraith, fingers wrapping around his as they both cradle her blaster. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted to do, Doctor? Save me?”

 

She is steady where he is shaking. His hearts are pounding and his head is light and her finger applies the slightest bit of pressure over his, her lips on the shell of his ear. Her voice is a far away hum of _this is the only way_ and he thinks of the lives that he’s lost, the soldiers that have fallen, the brave, faceless masses that have given their lives under his banner. He thinks of the monsters he’s sent to the grave and Cyber planets he’s blasted to smithereens. He thinks of the blood already staining his hands, and yet, even to save themselves, he can't bring himself to pull the trigger, to take his wife’s life, no matter how broken this other version of her has become.

 

She must read his thoughts, because her voice is a tender challenge, a fact wrapped in a threat as she whispers, “You can’t keep us both.”

 

Resentment or hate is on the fringes of her voice, this other woman everything she’s ever hated about herself, everything they’ve both always feared becoming. He knows she’s right, and more than anything, he wishes that time was frozen. Her finger twitches over his again, and in the heartbeat between the kickback and the bang, he understands. Finally, he understands, why River was willing to tear the universe apart, to shatter time to not have to make this decision, to not pull a trigger.

 

The echo of the gun is still ringing in his ears, his mind still dazed and confused when her delicate fingers caress over his cheek, turning him to face her and bringing him in for a kiss. Their lips meet in a soft brush, his eyes closing and body surrendering to her as it always has. Her hands have slithered into his hair, kneading at his scalp until his frame instinctively relaxes against her. He's always been a little helpless when it comes to her, always malleable, always a little too eager to please. Now is no exception, because he opens his mouth to her before she even asks permission. His obedience makes her hum with approval as she claims his bottom lip, sucking and dragging her teeth across sensitive flesh.

 

Her nails dig into his skin, hands fisting in his hair as she comes back in for more. Their lips meet again, and this time it's anything but chaste. Her mouth moves hungrily over his, and when her tongue slips past his parted lips, she lets out the most sinful moan he's ever heard. She plunders his mouth like she savoring the flavor of him, her tongue stroking against his like his essence is something sweet she means to devour. Terror and euphoria burst through his veins in equal measure, and a groan that could be protest or encouragement rumbles from the back of his throat. The sound of it bids her to press herself against him like pleasure is only something she can obtain by the feel of his skin, like his life force is something she can share and steal if it weren't for the barriers between them.

 

She tastes like a promise, intoxicating and endless, like their future is stretched out before them, no twisted timelines or fixed events to tear them apart. His whole body buzzes in warning or in praise, and there it is again, that static on his tongue, that thrill of linear days. Her lips almost burn against his, like war and salvation on his tongue. She tastes like every good thing they've ever fought for turned to ash; she tastes like bitter, bitter hope. Lust and fear rocket through his body, as River pushes deeper into him like she's stealing his kiss rather than giving one. It feels like he's starving and drowning all at once and it's only when she pulls back, when his dizzy eyes have fixed on her feral smile that he sees she's changed.

 

She's darker and smokier, wild abandon where once he saw fear. The Doctor’s hearts stutter, ice ravaging his veins. His gaze slides from River’s sinful smile to see the other version of his wife crumpled on the sand. Time stops then, centering around them like a still point. In his ears, there is only static and the pounding of his own pulse. The gun in his hand is heavy, a black hole pulling him down. His palm burns from the weight of it, and the Doctor releases the weapon as if the metal has branded him. It clatters to the sandy ground, but the sound of it is lost to a haze of panic as the woman before him strokes his cheek, nails scratching at his skin as her body arches into his. She’s studying him, eyes like embers as they burn across the sharp angles of his face and soft, quivering lips. Her nails scrape along his jawline, digging into his skin as she turns him back to face her.

 

The Doctor's head twists, still in a daze as she brings her mouth to his once more, not to kiss, but to brush against. It's soft and sweet, like a silent sickness as her tongue slips out, ghosting over his bottom lip, her voice throaty and intoxicating as she breathes out, “I've missed how your innocence tastes.”


	4. Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Now I understand why him indoors always enjoys watching me work,” the other woman muses, fingertips tracing the barrel of her weapon. "I do hope there are more of me out there in the universe. It's rather erotic, seeing one's self die." She speaks like an untouchable god, and maybe she is one. Maybe, in their world, they live without consequence or care or mercy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We upped the chapters to 5 because this one was getting out of hand. Tune in next Thursday for more pain and suffering. *finger guns*

 

“Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.”

― Jo Nesbø

* * *

 

 

It stings.

 

A blinding light bursts behind her eyes, and there’s a sudden burning in her side, like a lightning strike centered just above her hip. The smell of charred flesh fills her nostrils and it takes her longer than it ought to, to realize the burn radiating up her side is from blaster fire. Her hand falls to the smoking wound, the frayed edges of her clothing glowing like embers. There's no blood, the plasma cauterizing the injury before any has a chance to spill, and from the lack of static, River knows whoever pulled the trigger wasn't shooting to stun; they were shooting to kill.

 

Still half blinded by pain, River falls to the ground, partly to seek cover, and partly because her knees threaten to buckle beneath her. Her hand is already reaching for her own blaster, finger on the trigger as her free palm presses into her side, shielding her ruined flesh from the elements. Urgent eyes scan her surroundings, zeroing in on two figures half hidden by stone. One of them is already rushing towards her, like a man possessed, coat tails swishing madly behind him. River flinches as the sight of it, of _him_ , sends her reeling back to _cold metal pressing against her throat_ and _a hilt digging into her chest_ and _red red_ ** _red_** _._

 

She can feel the dried blood caked under her nails and in the creases of her palm. It scratches against the metal in her hand, and she swears she can hear the echo of her name bubbling from his pale lips. It’s desperate and pleading and it’s only when the figure barreling towards her nearly stumbles that she realises it's her husband calling for her, panic rattling around the syllables of her name. 

 

Her Doctor is running towards her, and the revelation makes something inside River crumble with relief. He collapses on his knees before her, and his close proximity makes the fingers around her blaster go numb. The handle is heavy, the barrel too close to his chest. Hazel eyes are wide and fixed on her as his hands shake and flutter around her. Her husband reaches for her and flashes of the other him sting like brands behind her eyes. Before River can think of the ramifications, before her mind recalls the second figure up on the hill and the burning wound in her side, the gun is slipping from her hand and thudding softly against the sand between them.

 

His hands tremble as they hover around her, eyes scanning her bloodied dress. He quivers with the need to touch, to help. But he hesitates, fear and something else behind his worried eyes. He’s holding back, unable or unwilling - no, _undeserving_ of touching her. And it isn't until she sees the guilt written in his wary gaze that River realises something is horribly wrong.

 

"I'm sorry- I didn’t know. I couldn’t…" he stutters out, apologies on his lips, and it doesn’t make sense, doesn’t add up until-

 

“No, you never can,” the shadow of herself confirms, appearing behind him like a specter, pity and disdain and reverence falling from her tongue. “You’re always weak when it comes to me.” 

 

The Doctor doesn’t spare the wild woman a second glance, too focused on her and the burn in her side, but River's eyes snap to her darker self, watching with dread in her gut as the other woman turns a gun over in her hand, a smirk on her lips. River's gaze slips back to the Doctor, lingering on his shaking hands and his guilt ridden eyes and _oh_. 

 

She tells herself it’s the pain in her side that's made her dizzy, and she hisses at the reminder of it, a gasp slipping from her lips. The Doctor’s eyes fly wider, hysteria buzzing around him like a static charge. But he doesn’t dare touch her, not until River breathes out a rushed but quiet, "I'm fine. It's fine. Forgiven.”

 

She forces herself to smile through the pain and she wants to tell him it’s okay, it’s not fatal, it doesn’t matter. But she finds herself silenced when his eyes find hers, his brow pinched like her words cut him more than comfort him. Their gaze doesn’t stay locked for long, his wary eyes scanning her face, jaw dropping slightly in horror. It’s only then River remembers the mark his other self left on her, the crimson print smeared across her cheek. She turns away so her husband doesn't see it, hiding the evidence of her transgressions as the Doctor's eyes shift guiltily back to her wound. 

 

"I'll fix this," he mutters to himself, to her, to the desolated planet around them, and the other woman's laugh crackles through the air like grease on a too hot frying pan. It's rich and manic and stings like a papercut to her conscience. 

 

"Now I understand why him indoors always enjoys watching me work,” the other woman muses, fingertips tracing the barrel of her weapon.  "I do hope there are more of me out there in the universe. It's rather erotic, seeing one's self die." She speaks like an untouchable god, and maybe she is one. Maybe, in their world, they live without consequence or care or mercy.  

 

River watches as her own green eyes rake over her form. It makes her skin crawl, the sight of her body stalking toward them. She moves like a wraith, malicious intent in every silent step. Dark visions dance in her irises, and River can read the other woman’s thoughts, a language she might have once known. It’s broken and blurry, and among the chaos and fire she sees the past and the future and the present dancing in smoke. Life and death, hers and the Doctor's, again and again, and River has to look away before she chokes, before the other woman’s appetites swallow her whole. 

 

Her other self smirks like she knows, like breathing is something she gave up long ago, traded air for ashes, her conscience for consecutive days with her love. Her hands look more like claws than fingers as one wraps around a communicator and lifts it towards her lips. Her mouth is red as blood and she may as well be sinking her teeth into an apple, eyes smiling like Eve when she sent Eden up in flames, tongue folding around the words, "Sweetie, I-"

 

The summons dies on her lips as quickly as it was formed, the only response she receives the echo of her own voice coming from River’s pocket. 

 

The Doctor freezes, and River pretends not to notice the way his face falls, like all his nightmares have just come true. She sees it in his eyes, the moment the Doctor realizes that the crimson staining her dress isn’t hers. A small breath of relief slips from his lungs as his eyes roam her form, taking in every drop of blood, _his blood_. His features change so fast she hardly has time to catalog them all: realization and pity and fear and sickness and all-encompassing guilt. 

 

The other woman's face contorts as well, hateful green eyes narrowing on River's utility belt. “Where is he?” she snaps, worry fraying the edges of her voice. 

 

River smirks, leaning forward in an attempt to get to her feet as she pants, "Dead."

 

The confirmation makes the Doctor's wide eyes shift to her face even as his arms fold around her to help her stand. She wonders what it is he’s looking for, if he’s hoping it’s a lie or the truth, if he’s proud or terrified of all the things she’s capable of doing for him. River swallows thickly, fighting down the memories of her hand slipping on a knife, banishing the way her thoughts conjure images of the broken creature she’d never let her husband become. 

 

She refuses to look at him, eyes on their enemy, because River doesn’t have to study her husband to tell the difference between him and the man she’s just slain. She can feel his essence, his light, radiating off his skin, hope coursing through his veins where the other man knew only torment. Her other self reeks of that same putrid agony, and River can’t help but wonder how her Doctor couldn’t tell them apart. Is suffering what he feels when he touches her? Is poison all he’s ever tasted on her tongue? Does he look at her and see the numb and jaded monster she’s tried her whole life to bury, a psychopath more than person, a weapon more than a woman?

  
  
The other River’s hair is wild, eyes crazed, her skin buzzing with unspent energy, stolen time crackling around her as she shouts, “You’re lying!”

 

“‘fraid not,” River huffs, hiding the strain in her voice as she steadies herself on her feet. The Doctor is still wrapped around her, but she untangles her limbs from his to reach into her belt. Her fingers fold around the warm hilt, tossing the weapon the other woman's lover had been wielding to the floor. The Doctor lets out a quiet gasp in her ear. It's shock and horror, but awe too. The blood, _his_ blood, has worked into the crevices of the blade, strange symbols now stained with crimson. She wonders if he recognizes it, if something about the dirt caked handle and dried blood have jogged his memory.

 

Other River’s eyes fly wide, lips parting like she wants to scream, but no sound leaves her lips. Instead, her eyes go cold, blank, empty. Forever the controlled psychopath. River knows that look; she's seen it in the mirror, in her nightmares, in her darkest hours. She's never looked so dangerous, her lack of emotion just a cover for the way her insides are fracturing into tiny pieces. The woman's fingers tighten, slow and calculated, around the weapon in her grasp, the barrel now aimed at both of them.

 

River’s hands twitch, but as they paw at her holster, she remembers with a sense of dawning horror that her weapon isn’t there. Hearts stuttering, she recalls dropping the gun to the ground between them. Before she can act, the Doctor is already releasing his hold on her side and scooping the weapon from the sand. Arm visibly shaking, he raises it towards the wild-eyed woman who shares his wife's face.

 

Her expression shifts instantly into one of amused disbelief, a breathy cackle spilling from her mouth. "And what exactly do you plan on doing with that, _honey?"_

 

There's something wild and desperate in the Doctor's eyes, and it frightens River more than the other version of him ever could. He can't be this, can't become this. She won't allow it for as long as she lives, and so she treads carefully, her voice hushed and soothing and even as she says, "What are you doing, my love?" Because this is her job - always has been. Not his, never his, not when she's here to ease his pain. She walks the polluted path; she dances with demons so that he doesn’t have to. 

 

"No one else has to die," he declares, defiant as his grip on the weapon tightens. River's eyes sting with tears of anger or terror, because he's grasping at straws and they all know it. "I can get you home. I can…"

 

“You don’t get it, do you? There's no going back from where we came. We used to be like you." She stalks towards him as she speaks, her voice a desperate, vindictive hiss that steals River's breath, every footfall closing the distance between them like a slowly tightening noose. "We were happy once."

 

River tries to step between them, to come between her husband and her nightmares, but the Doctor holds steady, stronger than she is in her weakened state, and she hates the way he feels the need to protect her. She can see past his shoulder to the other woman. Her eyes are feral and nothing like what her own reflection must be. She’s lost and decaying, swallowed by sin and drained of remorse.

 

"What happened to you?” she hears the Doctor ask, broken and defeated and so very sad.

 

"We lost _everything,_ ” comes her biting reply, and River tries not to notice how the other woman's hand lingers near her stomach, tries not to let her eyes dwell too long on the way fingers curl around something that isn’t there.  

 

"River," he speaks against a dry throat, and it's a sound she never wanted to hear, the Doctor speaking her name as if he doesn't know her at all. The syllables sounds wrong as they wrap around his tongue, and the other her must think so too, judging by the grimace on her lips as the Doctor breathes out, "Let me help you. Please."

 

"Helping me is how we got here," she spits and her words are a rush of nostalgia and pain, a past rich with minefields and love letters. She closes the space between them, allowing the gun held in the Doctor's hand to press against her chest, between her hearts. There's a small twist to the corner of her lips, not quite a smirk but a taunt, almost daring him to fire whist his hand trembles around the heavy weight of River's weapon. 

 

River doesn't have to wonder how that feels, to look into the eyes of a lover while one's finger twitches around a trigger. She can't let him break his rules. She's seen what he can become if he does. She's tasted the wickedness of his misdeeds on her tongue, tasted ash on lips that ought to be sweet. She's tasted poison where there ought to be overly sugared tea. She wants to save him from it, to make it so he never has to know the guilt that comes with such an action, but any sudden movement could disturb the balance.  

 

The other woman’s green eyes are steady and sure, almost pleading as she challenges, "Do it." 

 

The breath in River’s lungs has gone stale, trapped within organs that have forgotten their basic function. Even her hearts have betrayed her, beats skipping erratically against her chest. There’s fire in the Doctor’s eyes and her knees have gone weak and it’s a wonder she’s even still standing at all, because there’s a gun in a pacifist’s hands and surely the whole world has been turned upside down.

 

Time bends around this moment like water over the threshold of a cliff. His finger on the trigger is a current pulling him down down down, plunging into the unknown, and River can read the struggle on his face. She can see how he resists, how his arm trembles from swimming against the tide. Her hand hovers near his back, too afraid to touch him. He shakes as if he’s being torn in two, between what he thinks he needs to be for her and who he is in his hearts.

 

It’s only when his arm goes limp that River remembers to breathe again. The limb hangs against his side and River isn't sure if its relief or guilt or _pride_ that washes over her; that he couldn't do it. She still has the blood of his other self caked under her nails and here he stands, unable to do the one thing she has done time and time again.

 

The other River's lips crack wide into an unnerving, unhinged grin. "You can't, can you? You never can. All the places we've been to, all the galaxies we’ve burned, and you never, _ever_ can." She snarls at him, free hand flying up and knocking the gun from his grasp. It skids cross the sand, away from them, a lifeline, a defense, gone in the blink of an eye. “You think you’re so _good._ But you’re not half the man my Doctor is.”

 

“Was,” River corrects and her duplicate's eyes fix on her,  face contorting into that of a nightmare. It makes River’s blood run cold, to see her own deadly eyes trained on her. She knows that look, has pinned it on Daleks and Cybermen and anyone who dared to harm the people who matter most to her.

 

“And you,” the woman drawls, disdain and judgment and pity raking over every syllable. “Was I ever so pathetic? Tell me,” she pauses, licking at her lips, savoring the moment as it hangs in the air. “How'd it feel? To do the one thing you thought you never would? Did you _enjoy_ it, River? Did you enjoy it as much as I'm going to enjoy hearing you scream as I rip out his hearts?" 

 

There's a sick, masochistic joy in her voice, the woman's lips curled up in a sinful, open-mouthed smirk, and River swallows back the nausea building in her stomach. She sees her duplicate's muscles shift, recognises her own tells well enough to know the woman is about to strike. So she moves first, lunging for the darker version of herself. Her counterpart's arm raises as a reflex, weapon pointed straight at River's hearts, but she's quicker, grabbing the other woman's wrist and _twisting_. The gun drops to the ground, and River ignores the way her side screams in protest as she shifts her feet to kick the weapon away, a snarl too feral to be natural bubbling up from her other self's throat.

 

The Doctor rushes forwards, but River shoots him a glare, a warning. He'd only get in the way, end it with one or both of them lying dead in the sand at her corrupted self's feet. She can't fight someone who knows her every move, her every thought, when she has to protect him at the same time. 

 

She ducks the other River's swing, grabbing her arm and pulling up, but her duplicate counters her, hooking a foot behind her ankle and unbalancing them both.

 

”How could you let him become that?!” River hisses, pushing against the other woman to regain her balance. Her voice cracks over the desperate question, and it's laced with blame and disgust because, “How could you let him fall? Our one promise and you broke it. Prison? Our regenerations? All the sacrifices we've made; what's it all for if you've let yourself become exactly what they said you’d be? Everything you stand for is a lie.”

 

"What do you know about _sacrifice_?" The furious woman before her takes a step back and stills for only a moment, a tiger before it attacks, breath heavy, the fire in her piercing eyes doused by a cold and dark void. “He broke his promise first. So I broke mine to be with him.”

 

It doesn’t escape River, how these lost souls seem to contradict one another: the blame on his River’s tongue every bit as potent as it had been on the now-deceased version of the Doctor. She can’t help but wonder who truly threw the first stone? Where did her psychopathic nature begin and his detachment end? The look in her other self’s eyes is a familiar one, ferocious and determined, and it occurs to her that maybe they didn’t do what they did for hate, but rather, _love_. Maybe there were never any stones at all, only the mountain that separated them and what it took to tear it down. Maybe together they turned their rules into rubble, and from the destruction, they built an empire. Maybe they deserted all their other promises and devoted themselves to the one thing that mattered. _Always and completely_.

 

“Then I pity you both,” River sighs, and it’s barely a whisper, her hearts aching for the other woman even as she shifts, hand flying up to strike.

 

But her injury screams at her side, throwing off her usual precision, and the other woman blocks her easily. Claw-like fingers dig into River’s forearm as the corrupted version of herself yanks her closer, a whispered laugh on her lips as she hisses, "Pity _me_? Suffer for him all you like, but he'll never love you the way you want him to. The way you _need_ him to. He'll never love you the way my Doctor loves- loved me." A flash of pain blazes in her eyes as her gaze cuts to the Doctor, still hovering nervously nearby. River can see him twist and shiver under the other woman's piercing stare. "He isn't capable of it."

 

“If loving me turns him into this, into _you_ , then I wouldn’t want it anyway.”

 

The other River smirks, a knowing twist to her curling lips and doubt upon her tongue as she taunts, “Wouldn’t you?”

  
The challenge sinks into River’s bones, cutting into a raw and tender and neglected place between her hearts. It carves fresh wounds into fantasies best left forgotten, because she doesn’t dare think about the depths she would sink to, to be certain her affections were reciprocated in kind. She doesn’t let her thoughts dwell on the joy it would bring her to know the only man she’s ever truly, deeply loved, felt the same for her, because the Doctor being willing to die for her is a tempting, dangerous dream she’s only ever dared to entertain in her darkest hours. His smile alone is enough to make her fearless; she can only imagine what his devotion would do to her too.

 

Even though she knows she’s better than that, stronger than any lucid fantasy, just the thought of it is intoxicating enough to make her drunk, to make her compromised. Her other self seizes the opportunity, turning and sweeping River’s feet out from under her amidst her distraction. River lands with a grunt on the sand, her duplicate straddling across her hips. She's loathe to take her eyes off the twisted woman above her, but she can't help but flick her eyes towards her husband, watching the indecisiveness flash across his face as she lies in peril. The woman’s nails dig into her jaw, thumb swiping reverently over the crimson print left there by her husband as she forces River's gaze to meet hers.   
 

The other woman’s eyes are distant as they track across River’s cheek, staring at the stain that is all that’s left of her husband, a bloodied handprint the remnants of his legacy. River wonders what the other woman is thinking, what memories haunt her subconscious. And her duplicate must read her mind, answering River’s curious thoughts with a faraway voice and a gaze lost in the shadows of her past. 

 

“Gets a little dull after a while though, doesn't it?” she asks, too soft, too tender for the murderous way she presses River into the ground. Hateful green eyes break from River’s, slowly clawing their way back to the Doctor. “We sacrifice for him, over and over again. Isn't it about time he returned the favor?"

 

Empathy flickers and fades in River’s mind, like lightning: there and gone in the blink of an eye. She wonders how much history she shares with this woman. How much of herself does this woman see shining in her eyes? How much of River’s future is written in the snarling lips above her?

 

The woman’s burning eyes fall back to River, grief and agony tugging at the corner of her lips as she promises, “If you knew what I do, you’d thank me for killing you here, for ending it now before you have to suffer what I've suffered."

 

“You think I haven’t always known I would die for him?” River brings her elbow up, making contact with her captor's jaw and giving her a chance to shift out from beneath her opponent. Her side screams, jolts of electric pain radiating through her skin, as she backs away, keeping the Doctor in her sights as her counterpart wipes a drop of crimson from the edge of her mouth. “Falling in love with the Doctor is as good as signing your own death certificate. And it’s worth it. Every time. Always.”

 

“You think _dying_ made me this way?” And her words are accompanied by a soft and bitter breath of air. “Dying is easy, sweetie. It’s everything that comes after that hurts.”

 

Something inside River shifts, slipping in and out of place, stuttering like an erratic heartbeat. She thinks it may actually be her hearts, at first, struggling to stay thumping as the pain in her side makes the edges of her vision blur. A lucid feeling courses through her veins like a drug, and it’s only when the spark of chance nips at her mind that she realizes it’s not her body at all, but rather timelines that are ebbing and flowing like waves, a current that pulls her gaze back to her husband.

 

Realization brands him like a slap to the face, and where her other self is hollow, the Doctor looks fit to burst. Disbelief has slackened his jaw, even as pride twitches at his lips. An echo of hope flickers behind eyes shadowed with horror, and it’s clear that whatever skeletons haunt this woman’s past, whatever nightmare she’s enshrined, it’s a dream her Doctor shares.

 

River finds herself caught between a potential future and a past already lived, between her husband and herself, the current of their thoughts tugging her in the same direction. She looks away before she drowns in the conflict of her husband’s gaze, but what she finds on her duplicates face is no reprieve. And maybe it’s the ice in her other self's eyes that makes understanding wash over her like cold water; because now she knows why this darkened River looks so wrong. She’s pale because she’s a ghost, her eyes are hollow because she’s an echo. She's empty, as if she never really came back to life, just a jaded footprint of the woman she used to be.

 

Maybe, in their universe, the Doctor sacrificed everything to have her back, and maybe all he got in return was this broken copy. Maybe, they succumbed to madness like water circling a drain, too dizzy and drunk from the gravity of their free fall to notice they were heading for an empty void.

 

"Is that why you’re so full of hate?” River breathes, voice nearly cracking under the weight of her fears.

 

The wild eyed woman laughs, the sound deep and dark and hollow, confirming nothing as she takes a predatory step towards River. "Well, we’ve always hated him a little, haven’t we?"

 

River blanches as the truth slices like a razor blade between her hearts. She banishes the fleeting revelation, blurring it with love and devotion and the way he smiles down at her every time she straightens his bow tie. With the brightness of his eyes lighting up the darkness in her soul, River lets her anger overcome her pity, finding the strength to bite out, ”How could you ever kill the Doctor?"

 

The hypocrisy of it all is palpable even to her, irony like ash on her tongue, because one Doctor's blood still stains her skin while she chastises the woman in front of her for the exact same deed.

 

"How could _you_?" the woman counters, a smile stretching across her face. But it's forced, feral, broken and unhinged, the pain in her eyes from the loss of her Doctor radiating out like gravity from a white hole.

 

River shakes her head, willing it not to be real, to distance herself from the woman before her, to banish the voice of the man she just murdered, who told her they were the same in their hearts. "You do what you do for pleasure. It’s not the same!"

 

"That's where you're wrong," she sneers, venom on her tongue. "We're both just doing what we have to, to stay with him."

 

There's a gap in time, a pause so heavy that it's palpable in the air around them. The other River's eyes dart to the side and River's follow, her gaze landing on the discarded blasters lying half buried in the sand. She lunges, a pained hiss escaping her as the movement tears at her injured side, headful of the woman beside her moving in kind. The sand beneath them kicks up around their bodies, as they both rush for a weapon, blurring River's vision as her hand closes around the grip of a gun. Not a moment later, her other self is pulling her up, grip tight on River's arm, nails curling into her skin. There's the barrel of a blaster pressed against the bottom of her lungs, digging into her injury with abandon, River's own weapon pressing up between the other woman's hearts, harsh metal pressed against her sternum.

 

The other woman pushes the weapon further into River's side, the twisting of the barrel like hot coals over ruined flesh, and River can't help but let a pained whimper slip out from between her lips.

 

From the sidelines the Doctor finally finds his voice, scared and helpless as he tries to defuse the situation. “River, plea-“

 

 _“Shut up!”_ River snaps, shocked to hear her own voice echoing back at her as the other woman shouts in unison.  Their eyes lock, and a surrealness flickers through River’s veins, settling in her bones. They really are the same: an echo of love and loss and suffering and sacrifice dancing in the other woman’s eyes. River may as well be gazing into a mirror.

 

The woman pressed against her is breathless as her haunted eyes cut to Doctor. She leans in close, a lover’s tender caress as her own lips graze the shell of River's ear to whisper, "You took mine from me, so now I'm going to take yours from you. I'll tear him apart like I did this world, just to watch you shatter for what you've done. And since he’s the only one I've got left, I'm going to make you watch while I kill him slowly. One last time."

 

A gun shot blasts through the air like an atomic bomb or the roar of two galaxies colliding or the very birth of the universe itself. The force of it ripples across empty desert, echoing for miles and miles and miles, and River wonders if the deafening sound will ever stop ringing in her ears as a numbness courses through her like anesthesia.

 

The green eyes staring back at her shine like an ocean after a storm, and the other woman looks more alive than ever as her lips part on a silent, shaky breath. It’s only when she stumbles back, River’s gaze falling to the gaping hole between her duplicate's hearts, that she realizes the gun in her hand is not her own. Her finger on the trigger was as natural as breathing, the hesitance from the kickback as familiar as a kiss hello. She'd never paused to wonder which blaster was cradled in her palm, if she wielded the one set to stun or kill. She hadn't bothered considering the consequences, too caught up in the need to be the first to act, to save him, _to be with him._

 

She should feel something, she thinks, pity if not remorse or regret,  but instead all she feels is empty.

 

The Doctor surges forward, the thumping of his feet on dusty ground a distant pounding in River’s ears as her other self collapses to her knees, a cloud of sand fluttering up around her hips. She chokes, her eyes shining with surprise, but there's a curl to her lips, an almost smile that looks daringly close to relief.

 

And _oh._

 

Bile rises in River’s throat, a lead weight settling in her stomach: because her opponent doesn’t scream or shoot or retaliate in anyway. Instead, her arm falls limply to her side, the blaster barely clinging to her palm. She'd had every opportunity to strike, but she hadn't, as if her threats had been empty all along, from the moment her Doctor had drawn his last breath, her life forfeit the second his hearts stopped beating.

 

She doesn’t look so terrifying anymore, not with the barrel of her weapon dangling loosely from her fingers. She isn’t nearly so ominous now that all her promises of death have gone stale. She doesn’t look dark and foreboding, only tired as she asks, “He’s really dead?”

 

River nods, eyes brimming with tears she refuses to cry, voice cracking around the edges as she confesses, “Yes.”

 

The other woman nods back, a barely perceptible tilt of her head, her eyes unreadable as she stutters out a whispered, "Good."

 

A chill shoots through River's bones, uncertainty lashing at her insides, because it's impossible to discern her dying counterpart's meaning.  _Good he’s dead, good no one will bring her back this time, or good she won't have to live without him._

 

She crumples to the ground, fading green eyes fixing on the Doctor, as if the wrong him is better than no him at all. River shivers because she _knows._ She’s gone looking for his younger selves often enough to know that any echo is enough to ease the ache, that even a Doctor who doesn’t know a thing about her is still the most beautiful sight she’ll ever see. It must be a reprieve that he’s here, because River can’t imagine herself ever wanting it to end any other way. When it’s her time, she hopes he’s with her, even if he’s more hard copy than husband. Maybe it would even be easier that way, saying goodbye to a photograph.

 

Her other self's head slumps against the sand, body eerily still as she watches him, her chest rising and falling in an ever-slowing cadence as the life drains from her eyes. Her face is gentler than before, and the Doctor's breath catches in his throat. He softens and shudders like the emotions in the woman's gaze are familiar, the expression one River has given him time and time again. Her emerald eyes flutter closed, and a soft, fond, _happy_ smile pulls at the corners of her mouth, frozen in eternity. It’s the same expression the man she murdered had worn, and River understands now, just how far gone these two souls were. If the jaded version of the Doctor loved his River half as much as she loved him, it’s no wonder he went mad just to hang onto any broken version of her he could find. It's no surprise he sold his soul for the sake of reprieve, that a deal with the devil was a small price to pay to have her back.

 

Behind her, her husband’s hand hovers over her shoulder. His hesitation burns more than any touch, but when he finally presses a comforting hand to her skin, she finds the scorching warmth of his palm is just as painful as its absence. River swallows, fingers twitching uncomfortably around her blaster, and she tells herself it isn’t jealousy she tastes on her tongue, that green is a color she’ll save for daring gowns and the nights she has him all to herself. She pushes aside the part of her that _wishes_ , that longs to know just how deep his love for her lies, and reminds herself that the universe shattering for love once was more than enough, that their kiss and a few stolen seconds is more than most people get in a lifetime.

 

River breathes in as the other woman breathes out, and she tells herself that what she has is enough.

 

 


	5. Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor’s voice trails off, and in the silence she hears her own name echoing around the downfall of the greatest man she’s ever known.

“As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.” -Georgette Heyer

 

 

* * *

 

 

They burn the bodies.

 

It’s the only way to be sure, the only way to properly destroy beings such as them. The clothing catches fire first, the fabric sparking like the lick of hot flames is as natural as a cool breeze. Their corpses mingle with the ash of the world they burned. It’s almost fitting, that their grave is a monument to the way they lived, side by side and swallowed by an inferno.  

 

River sits, not far from the flames, her husband perched beside her as they watch their echoes burn. The knife is still on the ground before them, dried blood and sand coagulating on the handle and blade. It’s quiet, apart from the crackling of fire and flesh. The stars are coming back, the whole universe seemingly exhaling a sigh of relief. The more the bodies disintegrate, the more constellations come into focus, time recovering all on its own. The only planet that won’t recover is this one, but some things can’t be changed no matter how badly one wants them to. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he says for the umpteenth time, his eyes burning against the flesh wound at her side. River doesn’t have to wonder where his mind is lingering, doesn’t have to read his thoughts to know his hands are still heavy from the weight of the other woman’s gun. She doesn’t meet his eyes, her gaze somewhere far away, forgiveness already blooming on her tongue before the apology has fully left his lips.

 

“Don’t be,” River sighs, trying her best to ignore the sandy ground and salty air that remind her of Lake Silencio. She pushes all the air from her lungs until she’s suffocated the voice inside that insists she’s the one who needs forgiving.  River buries the nagging feeling, hiding the unease in her voice behind lips that twitch in amusement. “We’re even now.”

 

The joke is an easy misdirection; they both know it, both taste it as palpably as they can the smoke on the air.

 

“Don’t do that,” he says quietly, voice low as distant thunder. “Not about this.”

 

“What would you have me do, Doctor?” she asks just as softly, an even voice concealing the hurricane of her thoughts.

 

“I don’t know. Say something _, anything,”_ he grits, restless hands tugging at his shoe laces and the hem of his trousers. A silence descends and in it she can feel the way his mind replays the events of today over and over like a record on repeat. “Your other self,” he starts. “There was a moment where you, where _she,_ was vulnerable with me, and I.. I hoped-“

 

“Is that what you want?” River snaps, her tone sharp as daggers even to her own ears. “Me to be more like her?”

 

“No!” He tenses, frustrated hands gesticulating around his face. “I just want to know!“ His temper fades, unsure tongue stuttering over how to continue, “How... how are you?”

 

There’s genuine affection in his eyes, a sentiment she once clung to now burning her from the inside out. River scoffs, and she can’t say why she’s being difficult, why the kindness in his eyes makes her lash out. Psychopath walls she’s done her best to tear down crystallize around her hearts in a last-ditch effort to separate herself from this other woman. Perhaps she shields him from the hurricane raging inside her, because not hiding from him is the only bridge she’s yet to cross. “How do you think?”

 

“I don’t know, River,” the Doctor all but snarls, more agony than anger. “You never tell me, that’s the point.”

 

She bristles, fury running like a live wire in her veins, but not for the reason he suspects. She’d gladly bleed for him, gladly give the air from her lungs to keep him breathing. She’s angry because he let the other her get so close, that he swallowed the lie so effortlessly. She tries not to think about the fact that he couldn't tell her apart, that he was so easily seduced by the idea of Rule One turning to ash between them. River can't help but wonder if she and her counterpart are more alike than she thought. Does she reek of the same dark energy she sensed on her other self? Is it just beneath the surface, the darkest parts of her buried alongside all her other fears? 

 

Whether he pulled the trigger or not, her voice in his ear convinced him to cradle a weapon in his pacifist's grip. Was he so susceptible to her? Did she hold his morality in the palm of her hand? Had his other self been right all along?

 

“If she confessed something I never would,” River begins, and the question is softer than she means it to be, her treacherous voice nearly cracking over syllables she means to hiss. “Then why was it so difficult to tell us apart?”

 

“I suppose,” he starts, as disheartened as he is hesitant as he lets out a tired sigh. “I just hoped.”

 

She can tell he's berating himself for ever being so foolish as to believe his wife would ever be vulnerable with him. But they aren't like other people. Naivety isn't a luxury they can afford, a fact she came to terms with long before any little girl ever should. It appears the Doctor is finally learning that lesson, because the tremor in his voice tells her he’s already mourning the brief reprieve. The shadows darkening his features are all the evidence she needs to know he’s already buried the hope that they’ll ever be able to speak openly with one another.

 

As much as she longs to, River understands, now more than ever that normalcy is something they can never have. Honesty is a bridge they can never cross, because it will only bring them one step closer to their other selves. It would be a willing step toward darkness. So River swallows all the things she’d like to say, all the questions she isn’t sure she wants answered. She lets out an exhausted sigh instead, and with it, she gives the Doctor all the answers he seeks.

 

Silence falls for a while longer, dust surrounding them as fingers of red and yellow and amber lick at a black sky and the stars beyond. River’s gaze is lost to the fire, looking past it or through it or nowhere at all. She pretends not to notice that the Doctor hasn’t taken his eyes off her, how he’s been studying the angles of her face and the way orange hues roll across the apples of her cheeks. The warm colors dance before her, and she can’t seem to keep the images out of her head: his wicked smile, the knife in his chest, his breath on her skin when he told her how beautiful she looked bathed in the wake of destruction.

 

The words cut deep, but it’s nothing compared to her husband’s hypnotized eyes. His gaze stings like peroxide on an open wound, and she wonders if he agrees, if the glow of a funeral pyre on her skin steals his breath. His blood is still under her nails, an echo of dried crimson soaking into the creases of her palm like a gory fortune teller's map.  River feels her stare grow more distant with every emotion she attempts to bury. She must look as brutal as she does divine, as wicked as she does ageless, and maybe he wasn't so wrong to confuse her with her other self after all. 

 

She wonders if the Doctor is asking himself the same question, if he’s berating himself for how he let this happen, if he’s scolding himself for the sins of another life.  She wonders which one of them he blames for the villainous path they stumbled down. Does he blame himself for being naïve or her for always tip-toeing so close to the shadows? She wonders what her other self told him, if she accepted blame as easily as his other self was to assign it. 

 

The Doctor scoots closer to her, eyes still fixed on her profile. She wants to reach for his hand, but she curls them into fists instead, hiding the evidence of her transgressions. Her eyes drift from the flames, landing on the knife between them. It’s funny, how something so small can have so much gravity. It’s very existence is a stain upon this universe, an otherworldly hum surrounding it like smog. And maybe it’s nothing more than morbid curiosity, but River can’t keep her wary eyes from studying the weapon that’s seen so much destruction. The handle is scuffed and chipped, rich with battle scars that swirl in the most familiar of ways.

 

A need to discover demands River reach for the weapon, turning it over in her palm as delicately as she would any artifact in need of study. Jagged marks and intricate scratches cover the handle in swirling script, because they aren’t battle scars at all, but rather a long-forgotten language. It’s hard to read, the notches too caked with dried blood to decipher. Whatever they say, they were done in a hurry, by a malicious hand with little care.

 

There is one word that’s still legible, a carving  older than the rest, larger too. It’s smooth and precise where the others are rough and harried. At the center of the handle, engraved in fine, Gallifreyan script, one word stands out amongst the rest.  
 

“Koshchei?” River reads aloud, a humorless, confused laugh on her lips. “Koshchei the Deathless, like the fairytale?”

 

The Doctor flinches at the syllables even as he snorts, “Probably. But the universe hasn't known him by that name in a very long while.”  
 

Green eyes widen, the tension in his frame making her careful as she asks, “You knew him?”  
 

"Yes, a long time ago." There's a lengthy sigh from him, a breath heavy with the weight of thousands of years. River's eyes fall back to the blade as he says, "My oldest friend."  
 

River's brow furrows and she can almost see the red fields, almost feel the heat of twin suns on her face as she breathes,  "The Master?"  
 

The question is quiet, a secret whispered as if speaking such a name too loud will summon monsters.  
 

"He wasn't the Master back then, not when I gave him that."  
 

River's eyes study it, noting the jagged carvings with a new spark of fear thrumming through her veins, "Why do you think the other you had it now?"  
 

Her husband holds a breath of air in his chest until she's sure even his Time Lord lungs must be burning.

  
"He gave it to me during the Time War," he confesses, and River doesn’t miss how he speaks in the present, more evidence that their paths don’t stray that far from the dark road their other selves dared to tread.

 

Her thumb strokes over the handle, wood and grit rough against the pad of her finger. Flakes of dried blood fall onto the sand as she does so, and before she can stop herself, River is scraping dirt and debris from the ragged markings, trying to decipher the carvings the Master himself must have added. She tries not to let her thoughts dwell on the dark crimson that crumbles into desert sand. She doesn’t dare linger on the centuries worth of horrors this weapon has seen. River continues to scrub at dried blood, and tries not to think about how many versions of her husband have felt the sting of this blade.  
 

When the muck clears, she lays eyes on words she wishes she didn’t know. The Doctor's many names, caked in his own blood, are carved into the Master's knife. Valeyard and Beast and Oncoming Storm are scratched into ancient wood, an ominous foreboding message from the dawn of time. The world around her is silent and yet there is  thunder in her ears. Her own blood pumping in her veins or the explosions of a million, million stars, she isn’t sure. The weapon in her hands is sharp and jagged and rusty and _heavy_ in ways that drag her soul down, even as the blade rests easily in her palm.

 

And River fears she already knows the answer when she asks, "Why would he give this to you during the Time War?"

_  
What use would a healer have with a knife?_

 

"He told me I'd need it," her husband confess and River's world centers around the shapes his mouth makes as he recounts, "He told me that, one day, I'd find something worth sacrificing my name for, and when that day came, I'd need this. I always assumed it was some kind of penance, because he knew I’d be the one to end it, to murder our people. I never considered…”

 

The Doctor’s voice trails off, and in the silence she hears her own name echoing around the downfall of the greatest man she’s ever known.

 

River swallows hard, silencing the ringing in her ears as she asks, "And in our reality, where is this knife now?"

 

“Don’t know, somewhere deep in the TARDIS, I imagine, locked away where I’ll never find it.”

 

There’s no doubt in River’s mind that he’s hidden it from himself. She dares not think of a reason the TARDIS would willingly give it back to him, would let him sign his own death certificate. Even now, River feels the ship humming against the back of her mind, a comforting bond between mother and child. And suddenly there’s a shiver laced in a sound that once brought her peace.

 

“We have to destroy it,” River declares. “Whatever it takes.”

 

Beside her, her husband nods in compliance, but there's another thought working away in his brain, something simmering beneath the surface. She lets him think, lets him brood in the memories of days long past. She lets him be, because maybe it's better if she handles it herself anyway. Best to keep temptation at bay. Besides, the TARDIS likes her, maybe her transcendental mother will even be so kind as to-

 

"River," the Doctor starts, breaking the silence. He hesitates for a moment, one last chance to pull back, to dance away from whatever thoughts have crept into his mind. When he continues,  his wary tongue speaks the last name she ever expected to hear on his lips. "Kovarian, what did she have you call her?"

 

The air in her lungs is sucked away like the vacuum of space. She isn't sure he's ever said that name to her before. Her youth was a topic avoided at all costs, it was a taboo between them, one of many questions he never dared to ask and she never dreamed of volunteering.   
 

In need of a distraction, River tightens her grip on the weapon in her hands. She wonders if he notices the way she seeks comfort in sharp things the way a child reaches for a teddy bear. Attempting not to choke on her own tongue, River spits out, "Why do you ask?"  
 

He shrugs, not meeting her eyes. "Humor me."  
 

The lack of explanation makes River skeptical at best. Maybe that’s the reason she relents. Or maybe it's the look on his face, the frightened, vulnerable one she's never been able to say no to, that makes her swallow past her better judgment. "Mummy," she admits, the title sour on her tongue even after all these years.   
 

The mere mention of Kovarian has her toying absent mindedly with the weapon, her inner psychopath coming to life the way children remember how to ride bikes. Her fingers toss the ragged blade between her fingers and up into the air like a reflex. There’s something soothing in the methodical movement, a hypnotic peace in the way there’s nothing but her heartbeats and the sound the blade makes as it cuts through the open air. She used to pass hours like this, days even, when she was locked behind the bars of her childhood room. She remembers being at war with herself even then, the Time Lord in her acutely aware of every passing second, while the human part welcomed the trancelike state.

She’s gotten better at it over the years, knowing when to be a weapon and when to be a woman, when to be cold and when to care, when to be hollow and when to be human.  
 

“It wasn’t all bad though,” she says aloud, that same hypnotic trance humming along the fringes of her thoughts. “I got revenge in little ways. In my head, I always thought of her as _mummy dearest,_ " the echo of a empty laugh bubbles in her chest, "you know, like from the old film?"  
 

River glances up, but rather than the light-hearted expression she'd been expecting, she finds that he's gone cold, expression like stone and shoulders stiff. His eyes are deep hazel in spite of the dancing light. His mouth is a hard line, as if resolve alone will keep out the heat. She wonders what else he’s trying to keep at bay, what thoughts have made the gold around his irises give way to darker shades.  
 

"Did you ever…" he begins, lost in thought and a million miles away. He won't meet her eyes, struggling to bring himself to speak the words he wants to say, to voice the terrible question he fears. "Did you ever see her again?" he asks instead, and River hardens and shatters all in the same moment because he should know. Surely he knew her better than that.  
 

"No, Doctor." It's conviction and a promise that she never sought the revenge they both know is planted deep between her hearts. “I never went looking for her.”  
 

“What if she found you? What then?” He's so solemn, so grave, and River tries to tame the rage that the thought of that woman inspires. She tries to block out the visions that dance in her mind lest he read the manic gleam in her eyes.   
 

“I don’t know,” is all the answer she gives him, because in all honesty, “I’m hoping I’ll never have to find out.”

 

He nods then, turning his eyes back toward the flames, and she can’t tell if it’s her honesty or her uncertainty that makes him turn away. The creases on his brow tell of burdens and foreknowledge and secrets best forgotten. 

 

"Sweetie, what's wrong?" she asks, and the concern in her voice causes him to shake out of the daze, eyes blinking as a smile that doesn't reach his eyes stretches across his lips. "Why the sudden interest? Did she say something to you, beca-"

 

"No," he's quick to quiet her. She can tell that he's lying, and she gives him a look that makes him sigh out, "He, the other me," he's shaking his head even as he says it, aware of his own ridiculousness for succumbing to a tricksters words, "he told me to ask you about her sometime."

 

She recalls how close the two men stood, how her trigger finger twitched as the imposter leaned in close to her husband and whispered words not meant for her ears. 

 

 _I made a deal with the devil,_ comes flooding back to her mind and River feels her blood go cold. 

 

"Why?" the breathless question is more to herself than it is her husband, but the man before her shrugs, oblivious to the thoughts pervading her mind. 

 

"Who knows," it’s a sigh of resignation, and there's something there, something he's not telling her. Why would he mention it now unless-

 

_I did what needed to be done to bring you back._

 

Her own Doctor’s face looks haunted, and not for the first time, River wonders if there’s something he’s keeping from, some dark and terrible secret buried in a past she’s yet to live. 

 

_In most universes, he doesn’t save you._

 

Her own Doctor’s face is haunted as visions of their other selves flicker through the flames. A mirage of charred flesh dances in the desert, and she wonders how many times he’s done this. How many times, how many ways, has he sat and watched her burn? How many times did he lose her before lighting the world on fire was a small price to pay to keep her? Why did this other him choose to save her when none of the others would? What was it that broke this other him, why did he crack when so many other Doctors let her slip through their fingers?

 

The memory of her other self’s fingers curling over her abdomen floods her mind. She pushes the thought away like a bad dream before her treacherous mind can conjure images she’ll never forget, before she mourns for a thing she never even had. River’s eyes find the flames, the cinders and ashes within, and wonders if it’s true, if loving her the most really is what led the other him into the beautiful, terrible dark.   
 

"Doctor?" she says hesitantly, and he looks at her with so much _hope_ , hope that she's opening up to him. "What she, the other me, said - about you not being able to love me like that. I want you to know, it's okay. I know…” her words stutter and he looks at her, his gaze so effortless, so expectant, and somehow the confirmation only stings when she continues, “I'm alright with it. I don't think I've ever truly expected it from yo-"

 

"River!" he interrupts her, horror and guilt tearing across his face. Hazel eyes bore into her as if she’s a heretic speaking out against the most holy of gospel. River is left to gape as the Doctor scoots closer to her on bended knee and takes her hands in his. “He doesn’t love you more, River. That’s what terrifies me. That's why I'm so scared. What I would do-” his pained voice catches in his throat, eyes shutting tight against bad memories, “-what I’ve already done, just because you asked.”  
 

He’s so shattered it can’t be anything but the truth, a sinner at her alter. It’s something she never wanted to see in the Doctor's eyes: an openness, a raw need for validation. He looks drunk and desperate and angry too. He looks ready to martyr himself in her name, to do anything to earn her faith. And can’t he see, can’t he understand that-  
 

“I can’t be your moral compass, Doctor,” she sighs out, exhausted and wavering, “not when mines so askew.”

  
_Not when my north is always you.  
_

_  
_ Her hand wrapped in his is as warm as the metal she held in her hand only hours before. He’s as solid before her as the form of her other self, his eyes hazel and bright as they stare into hers, and they’re all she thinks of whenever she pulls the trigger. Whatever deed she’s doing, she weighs against his smile. Will erasing a blemish from the universe leave room for his laugh? Will cleansing a world of a darkness make room for his bright grin? The answer is always yes, because she’d do anything to ensure his happiness. And it’s all too familiar isn’t it, that taking her own life is so much easier than ending his ever could be or ever was.

  
She just never realized he felt the same, that his love for her burnt as deep and as hard as her love for him. He would take a life all because she asked him to. He would rewrite time or make a deal with the devil all for her, and it strikes her like a knife to her own hearts, that the only thing that terrifies her more than losing him, is what he would do to keep from losing her. 

 

“Promise me something, Doctor,” her voice is as grave as the funeral pyre that lights up the night sky, “don’t break any rules for me.”  
 

His brow furrows in confusions, a question or a complaint hot on his tongue.   
 

“Promise me,” she says again, harsher this time, because if she lets herself soften she’ll crumble at his feet, “that when my time is up you’ll let me go.”  
 

“River,” he gapes, hazel eyes flying wide. “What are you-“  
 

“Mourn me, yes,” she cuts in, tone sharp as a razors edge because if she lets him talk he’ll find a way to cloud the importance of what she has to say. “But don’t forget who you are. I won’t thank you for it, Doctor.” 

 

She wields his title like a weapon against him, reminding him who he is. There’s inner turmoil clawing at him beneath his skin. He says nothing, just a simple nod. But it’s not conviction enough, so River grips his hand tighter in hers before turning over his palm, folding the knife into his hands. The choice is his, and she tells him so with her eyes, willing him to have the strength to one day let go of her, of this knife and whatever horrible purpose it might come to know.

 

He hesitates, her husband torn between giving her what she wants and that selfish sliver that burns a hole between his chest. Moments tick by like sand in an hour glass, the future a fluid thing she could drown in if only her time sense were as strong as his.  
 

But then his arm is pulling away from her. his eyes locked on hers as he tosses it aside. A shaking sob that tastes of relief and her own mortality burns River’s throat as the blade finds its place between the ashy remains of its owners. The fire hisses and spits as the knife sets alight, and she can almost taste it, the way history settles around them like a fixed thing.

  
But it's not enough.  
 

“I need to hear you say it,” River whispers, a quiet demand and softly spoken plea.  
 

She tries not to notice how guilt has darkened his irises. He looks as if she’s slapped him, but his jaw sets into a fine line as he gives a single, surrendering nod. Both eyes fix on brightly burning embers as they spark and dance, drifting up into darkened sky before disappearing into dust. When the Doctor speaks, his voice shaky and full of hesitation, it almost sounds like Rule One is curling around his tongue.

 

“I promise.”

 

 


End file.
